#i tried everything and nothing worked so this gameplay video is my fail safe

[ame-in-the-rain]

Soooo I made a game about my character Elliot but I could not for the life of me make it playable to anyone except me. So this gameplay video will have to do.

thanks to @canolatie for being so interested in this, and to @lemonade-vendor​ for being my playtester (even though it didn’t work)

(reblogs are greatly appreciated!)

[animatedrapture]

[ say it back ! ]

word count: 1.6k

(listen so it breaks your heart better 🤩)

it has always been in the back of his mind, always nagging at him as it sat there, suppressed. it was that nagging in the back of suna's head that constantly pushed him to become more affectionate than he probably should be towards you.  that you loved him and you meant every word of it.

in the very back of his head, way farther than this, is the fact that he loved you too—of course. of course he did. it was just that it confused him out of his own wits just what kind of love it was. it was confusing because the two of you always has been like this, close—so close; and if there's anything about you that he was afraid of, it's the possibility of getting his feelings mistaken for something more than just really good friends—because fuck, the rift that would create between your friendship was something that couldn't be mended so easily, if it could be mended at all.

but it was as if the universe has decided for him already as he listened to kenma explain what was going to happen in the stream, that it was time he finally faced it.

oh but what if she doesn't win even once?

huh.

but you will, he thinks. you'll win, because that's just who you are. you make things happen like brighter days in his eyes or warmth in his chest all over, you make things happen like your eighteenth birthday and falling in love with your best friend.

that's when it happens, the silence and wide eyes, the look your friends gave you as it slowly sunk in that you did. you won against kenma.

see? you make things happen like that. like making his heart hammer against his chest because again, fuck, what does he do now?

but you looked so beautiful even through the screen, your eyes wide and sparkling in such an awestrucking way, smile bright and cheeks slightly flushed it almost made him dizzy. you looked so happy that the words of tsukishima just earlier rings through his head, "as if he'd reject you."

yeah, as if he'd reject you.

🍒

it dawns to suna later in the night as he tried to fall asleep; that of course, it's been right in front of him the whole time. he loves you. he didn't know when it started but he knew he loved you three years ago when he had you in his room on your eighteen birthday; he loved you when he placed a kiss on your forehead during graduation as his mom captured the moment, a picture that sat on both his room and yours back home; he loved you when you helped him move his things where he is now, two floors above your apartment; he loved you in every match he had that you never failed to show up in; he loved you every moment you had slept in his arms.

🍒

suna stood in the lobby of the building, waiting for you with one of his hoodies in hand because he just knows you'll be too agitated to remember that it's early, and it's cold. the elevator dings, it's been about twenty minutes since he'd agree to meet with you. ah, and you're chewing on your bottom lip, you're anxious—but he is too.

he watches you realize how cold it is as you walked towards him, eyebrows furrowing together and your arms moving to wrap around yourself. when you're standing in front of him, he shoves his hoodie to your face and you think, ah, of course he knows. he wasn't your best friend for years for nothing, after all. he waits for you to slip it on and soon enough, you're drowning in his scent and the hoodie that was obviously too big for you as the hem reached just above your knees.

he has his hand resting on your back as you both walked towards the cafe.

you place your phone down on the table the moment you collect yourself. every inch of your movement felt watched—how couldn't you feel like this when you're being subjected under suna's sharp and observant gaze?

it takes all the will inside your chest to even look up and meet his eyes, and the moment you do, his eyebrow shoots up. it should've been more intimidating than this, you think. you've seen other girls in high school be on this end of suna's gaze as they confess to him, hoping for even a glimmer of chance; but that's what makes you different right now. right now—yes, you can feel the intensity from his mere gaze but it's not the same, his eyes looked... warmer. so much warmer than the one you saw so many times back in high school. each one you've watched always with some kind of ache in your heart as you hoped he wouldn't accept their confession.

suna just looked like he was patiently waiting, coaxing you to finally say it with your own words. so what else would you choke on your words for? when he's looking at you like that, like you can open yourself inside and out in front of him. so you try to speak. that is—you try.

but your mouth turns dry and suddenly you forget how to produce sounds with your own voice and then you hear him sigh; he sighs because he knows.

you start to panic when he started to get up from his seat across from you, and you think, oh god im fucking this up, aren't i? but it vanished just as quick as the thought surfaced in your mind when you see his hand held out to you as he stood beside where you were seated and you take his hand, of course.

there was no one you trusted more than your best friend, suna rintarou, after all.

much to your surprise, suna leads you back to your building. well, yours and his building. his hand that clasped yours from the cafe all the way now, in the elevator where you stood and waited til it reached his floor, provided so much warmth; it was as if he was telling you everything was going to be okay.

still, you wonder, why is he taking me to his place after i heavily failed a confession?

"c'mere and sit on my lap," is the first thing he says to you after you enter his apartment and walked to the couch—and you swore you almost choked on air just then.

you wear your emotions clear as day, so when you gape at him, eyes wide as saucers as you stood in front of him, his hand still clasped with yours, he only tugs you lightly with a roll of his eyes.

"c'mon, princess," he continues, watching you carefully. he wonders a little, you tell him on a daily basis that you love him, you sit on his lap to cuddle during movie nights with the miya twins even when he protests, you've teasingly flirted with him without an ounce of hesitation all these years.

why are you acting so bashful all of a sudden?

so he sighs again, really, you're the only one he'd work this much for. he spells it out for you, "you said it made you feel safe, right? you can tell me here, even hide your face all you want."

there's that familiar sparkle in your eyes right then, and a smile tugs on the corners of your lips that you can barely hold back; because that was suna rintarou right there, the one you knew and the best friend you've had for years. the one who always knew when and how to use even the most minuscule things he knew about you.

so you give in. nevermind that you've embarrassed yourself to him after finding out that this whole time, he's watched all of kenma's gameplay videos, even the ones with you as kenma's guest where you somehow manage to bring up suna no matter how only very slightly related an information in the game is to him.

most importantly, nevermind that you won a game against kenma kozume himself just to finally decide that it's time for you to confess to suna rintarou—this time where you make sure he knows you're serious and you aren't just teasing him with i love you's or that you're only saying it as a friend.

sure, suna always knew you weren't just playing around. that no matter how lighthearted or half-assed you've said it before, you meant it; it's only that those words would always be taken far away to the back of his head like ocean waves, drowned by the decision three years ago where both of you promised not to cross that line.

along that promise, all the times you've teased him, and how you've thrown around the three little words a little too many times, you've convinced yourself that maybe he just doesn't take you seriously anymore on the matter.

you bury your face into suna's chest, hearing the rhythmic ba-dump ba-dump of his beating heart, and you think it skips every random moments, but maybe you're just imagining things. you sat on his lap and he holds you like he always does. yes, this does make you feel safe.

before you can choke on your words again or forget to breathe, you finally say it.

"i'm so very painfully in love with you, rintarou"

and yes, he loves you. he loved you so much it was painful, too.

ah, but, was that love enough to risk such an anchor-like friendship?

《 masterlist || next 》

[fourteen: elusive redamancy]

fun fact:

🍒 suna rintarou did not say it back.

taglist: open

tags: @elianetsantana @peteunderoos @mizukisonoda  @kara-grayson04 @kukiisan @chocolaterumble @valrubiii @macchiatoast @honeydrip @laughingismorefun @kaiagiorgi  @stfucanunot @caxsthetic @sakomi-kun @seiijixcia @sempiternal-amour @miracleboy420 @loser-keiji @anngelllla @prettysetterboiss

[ddrkirbyisq]

Things have been going okay, I think!

World Letter Writing Day

Is coming up on Wednesday, September 1st.  Y'all know how much I'm into handwritten letters, so I encourage anyone who is interested to participate by doing some writing, either to a friend, or for an activist cause such as voter outreach.

Rhythm Quest Stuff

Progress continues on my indie rhythm game, Rhythm Quest.  As always, feel free to follow along via the devlog posts.  Here's the latest gameplay video, featuring a new level and song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6B_Dy3_To

I'm gearing up to try and run a closed alpha test soon, just with a handful of friends and such, to get some initial feedback, and maybe identify whatever issues of the game need work -- probably stuff like "this screen is confusing" or "this level is too hard", etc.  I've done a bunch of work over the past month on stuff like the UI and tutorial flows, so I think for this next week it's time to shift over and just make a bunch of content (e.g. levels and songs), which should be very fun!  (That and debug some performance issues on Android, yipee......)

Chicky Stuff

It has been a bit of a journey getting to this point, but my two silkie chickens (xiaohei + xiaobai, or black chicky + white chicky) are all settled in together and are living a happy life in their big bin in the corner of my office.  Their living space has gone through some gradual upgrades, and it has been nice carving out a nice home for them over time.

Blackie still bullies Whitie and some days they just decide to be very noisy, but overall they have been very well behaved.  It's been nice.

Other Life Stuff

I'm taking a short trip over labor day weekend! First time traveling in years, so it should be a (hopefully safe...) nice change of pace.  Nothing too fancy or anything, and as always I'll be looking forward to home cooking abroad, lol.

Speaking of which!  I have been watching more of Ms. Yeah's "office cooking" videos, haha.  Obviously not as relevant to me as before when I was actually doing office cooking, but still funny and...actually, a little inspiring sometimes honestly haha.

Space Alert Stuff

I've been continuing to do mission runs in Space Alert, my favorite board game.  Mostly solo, but I also had a session with a friend where we managed to actually do quite nicely, even finishing a 3-mission campaign with mixed white+yellow threats and ended with a ship in perfect condition (while slightly inebriated, to boot).  I've also managed some pretty nice achievements myself, including a yellow + red threats only mission, a perfect white + yellow + red mission, and a perfect yellow threats only double actions mission.

I did have a particularly nasty failed mission the other day though, just a really unfortunate combination of yellow threats on a double actions mission.  I had been chasing the perfect double actions yellow threats achievement, and it turns out I don't really think there was a realistic way to do that mission perfectly unfortunately.

Baldur's Gate Stuff

I've been continuing through my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 1, finally reaching the actual titular city of Baldur's Gate (in chapter 5 of the story).  My party is pretty much set now, I've got:

- The player character, as a gnome multi-classed fighter/mage.  Funnily enough she ends up allocating a number of spell slots to Identify (of all things) since the other mages in the party can't scribe Divination spells.  She generally just casts a buff or two and the walks into the fray wielding a Dagger of Venom.

- Kagain, the super tanky Dwarf fighter who comes with a whopping 20 constitution.  His base Dex is only 12 but I gave him the bracers of dexterity which push that up to 18, making him hard to hit and better at hitting himself.  I fit him with the cheetah boots which increase movement speed, which ensures that he's always at the front of the group as he sprints around.

- Yeslick, the Dwarf fighter/cleric.  I was initially running a different cleric, but decided I wanted another frontline fighter and Yeslick fit the bill.  He generally just walks up and tries to whack things, but is also responsible for healing duty as well as some AoE party buffs from time to time.

- Coran, an Elf fighter/thief who is the best archer in the game with an illegal 20 dex and 3-point mastery in longbows.  He has one job (shoot things dead) and he does it extremely well.  He also happens to be providing thieving support for the team at the moment, because...

- Imoen, the player character's childhood friend, who starts as a thief, but I have (as is popular), dual-classed her to a mage.  She's currently still on downtime for her thief abilities, so she's just a mage for now until she reaches next level, at which point she'll regain access to those.  Currently she's mostly responsible for casting AoE disables like Sleep, but will also fling around some direct damage spells as well.

- Edwin, the evil mage, who happens to be the best arcane spellcaster in the game.  He's got the widest magic arsenal in the party, and uses it to good effect.  Magic often dictates most combat encounters, so it's important to have a least one person fill this role well.

Since I'm still working my way through exploring the city, it's been a lot of just gathering quests and having Coran run around stealing everything he can from innocent people's houses.  You know, typical adventuring stuff...

That's about it for now, I think...

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-quiet-man-review-silence-is-stupid/

The Quiet Man Review – Silence is Stupid

During Square Enix’s bizarre 2018 E3 conference we mostly saw nothing of value. However, there was one game that caught my eye. This was The Quiet Man, and I’m not sure it captured my attention for the right reasons. Since seeing more of it, I realize I was excited not as a game but as a possible train wreck. Now it’s in my hands, and simply, it’s hard to be quiet about how hilariously awful the game truly is.

You play as Dane, a name I only know because I read the game’s Steam description. The best I can figure is that Dane works for a crime boss and is in love with some lounge singer. Then, some guy in a bird’s mask shows up and kidnaps the lounge singer. After that, I totally lost the plot. At no point does The Quiet Man even try to make sense. Sometimes there are hints of supernatural stuff. I think three different characters betray you. I’m not sure any of it ever matters.

It’s the Hush Hush Lad!

The reason I can’t figure the game’s plot out at all? Dane is deaf. The Quiet Man attempts to emulate this by playing no sound at all at any point in the game. This is a novel idea that can totally work if the developers build the game around it. However, The Quiet Man is not that game. It’s overwhelmingly obvious that this was a regular game that quickly shoehorned this in. Cutscenes will go five or more minutes yet include absolutely nothing but two characters talking. There are no subtitles, there are no translations, there is no way to tell what they’re saying. As such, the plot gets totally lost.

However, The Quiet Man seems particularly strange about this. The excuse given is that you “experience the world as Dane does.” Yet, Dane can understand sign language, so why isn’t any of that subtitled? It’s later shown that Dane can read lips, but the game still isn’t telling you what anyone is saying? Why are scenes that don’t even have Dane in them silent too?

The truth is, The Quiet Man has no interest in showing you how a deaf person experiences the world. Instead, deafness quickly becomes an insulting gimmick. It’s all part of an attempt to try to make a subpar beat ’em up stand out from the crowd. This especially feels true when you finish the game and it flat out tells you that you didn’t actually get the story before showing a countdown timer that shows how long before they release the patch that puts all the noises back in.

The Quiet Man uses his Quiet Hand to deliver a beat down

It should be noted that many of the game’s cutscenes are actually FMVs. It’s clear this is a very low budget production, as the game only uses FMVs for the most simple of moments. Long car conversations play out in FMV and the game awkwardly transitions to CGI the minute any action takes place. It’s hilariously obvious when these moments happen, as the CGI is awful. Sometimes the transitions are sudden, hidden behind a flash of white light. Other times the camera slowly pans to something innocent, like a wall, transitioning as it does so. I got the feeling the goal was to amaze players at these transitions. Instead, they just caused me to burst into laughter.

When its time to actually play The Quiet Man, you’ll be punching people in the face. The game has a very basic brawling system where you combine light and heavy attacks into something that vaguely resembles a combo. I say vaguely because all of the attacks feel sluggish and I was never sure which button did what. There’s a dodge button, and I could dodge attacks to counter-attack in theory. In practice, this only worked about once every five or so times I tried it. There’s no tutorial or interface of any kind. If there’s some secret to how to get consistently working counter attacks, it never revealed itself.

It’s the Quiet… Girl?

There are a few attempts to mix things up with a focus system. At certain times you can focus on an enemy to deliver a special super powerful attack. However, it’s never made clear when these times actually are. The only way I ever got focus to work was by smashing the button until it eventually let me use one. The attacks themselves are only really noteworthy for how underwhelming they are. Nearly every time I performed a focus attack, I got the same one. A really goofy open-palmed slap to the top of an enemy’s head. It’s the kind of thing that makes you just want to say “boop” when it happens, and not once did it look actually threatening.

Not like any of this matters once you learn how easy it is to exploit the combat system. Every single enemy in the game falls victim to the same problem. You can pin them against a wall and lock them into an endless combo by mashing the light attack. This includes bosses and even the final boss. It turns an already boring beat ’em up into a trivially easy one that makes you a tired man. It’s not like there’s even simple enemy variety to change things up. Every enemy is exactly the same, even if they’re holding a weapon. I can’t think of a single fight where I had to do anything other than mash light attacks against a guy pinned against a wall.

I hate everyone in this room

The lack of sound is also present in combat, contributing to a constant feeling of apathy. A dull muffled “thud” is the only feedback you get from your attacks. As you can imagine, this fails to actually sell your hits. There’s no soundtrack at all, which seems weird because it’s not like adding a soundtrack would do anything other than make the game feel a little better.

Everything about The Quiet Man is just plain ugly. Animations are stiff and fail to convey any weight. One awkward scene saw the main character dodging a boss’ punch, but it’s tough to buy when the boss’ fist clips right through the main character’s face. Speaking of Dane, his design looks like someone decided to mash together Spider-Man 3‘s emo Peter Parker with a 16-year-old version of Resident Evil‘s Leon S. Kennedy. The result is a character that I can safely say made me laugh at every scene he was in.

This is a totally normal thing that can happen on the streets of NYC

Look, even as a “so bad it’s good” game, The Quiet Man doesn’t work. It’s a boring, baffling, and genuinely insulting video game that fails at every single thing it tries. The story makes no sense as the protagonist’s deafness becomes a mere gimmick. The beat ’em up elements are absolutely no fun, the controls are awkward, and the game is ugly. The only positive I can pull from this is that I always wanted to see how much worse it could get. The Quiet Man deserves to remain silent.

TechRaptor reviewed The Quiet Man on PlayStation 4 with a copy purchased by the reviewer. The game is also available on PC and Xbox One.

More About This Game

1.0

  Awful

Summary

The Quiet Man is an absolute disaster of ideas that don’t work, bad design decisions, boring combat, ugly graphics, and attempting to use a real disability as a gimmick in a way that feels borderline insulting.

Pros

There May Be Great Voice Acting?

Cons

Dumb, Nonsensical Story

Poorly Used Deafness

Terrible FMV to CGI Transitions

Boring Gameplay

Ugly Graphics

Have a tip for us? Awesome! Shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll take a look!

Samuel Guglielmo

Associate Review Editor

I’m Sam. Been playing video games since PlayStation. Favorite games include Ace Combat 5, Perfect Dark, Final Fantasy IX, Metro 2033, and MonsterBag. Also loves books and can be found face first in one all the time.

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