#rip felixthejudge

[offtale-au-sc]

RIP FelixTheJudge

I apologise for not hearing about this sooner...evidently HOME creator FelixTheJudge was recently killed in a car accident. Taken from the post on /r/offthegame: “On [Saturday] of March 4, at around 12:45AM, Aaron was the passenger of a crash which, in order to avoid full collision, veered off and struck a guardrail, leaving him the only one in the ordeal to not come out alive.” I can’t say I knew him personally. He was, however, a very active fan of OFF, even in the fandoms waning popularity as of late. This is of course, not including his biggest achievement - HOME, which while I do disagree with some interpretations, is, I think, a fantastic game on its own right and certainly one of the most impressive fangames I’ve ever seen. Not being particularly religious myself (somewhat ironic, considering the icon of this page...), I can’t really say I know what’s happened to the man’s consciousness...but his spirit, I do believe, is alive today - in all of us who knew him (to any degree), and in those everywhere who strive to create art and stories. RIP FelixTheJudge, or Aaron, or whatever you’d like to be called. Thank you for leaving us with a beautiful fangame. I sincerely hope you find a place to call home, brimming with imagination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTc3oyedCvA

[jugdjay]

Hommage à FelixTheJudge

De son nom réel Felix Mullins, le créateur de HOME (fangame de OFF) et l’un des créateurs de Iter Itineris (fangame de Yume Nikki) est décédé ce vendredi 3 mars 2017 à 12h45 (heure locale) dans un accident de voiture dans la municipalité de Jefferson, dans l’Ohio. Il avait alors 24 ans.

Sa petite amie, Ashley Green, 24 ans, a perdu le contrôle de la voiture, qui est entré en collision avec un poids-lourd. Suite à la collision, les deux véhicules ont dérivé hors de la route et se sont percutés à la rambarde. 

Ashley a été emmenée à l’hôpital Mount Carmel, grièvement blessée (fracture du crâne et traumatisme crânien). Le chauffeur du poids-lourd, Abdikarim Abdirahman, en provenance de Saint Louis, s’en est sorti avec des blessures mineures et a également été transporté à l’hôpital.

A l’heure actuelle, une amie de Felix et Ashley a créé une campagne GoFundMe afin de réunir les fonds nécessaires pour financer les soins d’Ashley: https://www.gofundme.com/postwreck-recovery-fund-for-ashley

Un livestream en hommage à Felix a également eu lieu hier à 21h heure locale (ce matin à 4h en France), durant lequel 800$ ont été réunis pour les soins d’Ashley. Suite au succès de ce livestream, un second livestream en hommage à Felix aura lieu ce soir, même heure (demain, 4h en France): http://mutantrenegade.tumblr.com/post/158105028541/hey-we-reached-our-400-stretch-goal-so-we-added-a

Aux dernières nouvelles (hier), Ashley est encore dans les choux. D’après les médecins, elle n’a aucune blessure interne (mis à part le crâne fracturé), ce qui est déjà une bonne nouvelle.

Felix était un fan absolu de OFF et de Undertale, et était très actif dans ces deux communautés-là. Mais au-delà de ça, c’était quelqu’un de vraiment sympa dont la présence était toujours le bienvenue. C’était quelqu’un qui consacrait du temps pour son entourage lorsqu’on avait besoin de soutien, même s’il ne nous connaissait pas. Pour beaucoup de monde, moi y compris, il était comme un ami, non pas parce qu’il était un grand fan de OFF ou de Undertale, mais pour la personne qu’il était.

Je l’ai soutenu lorsqu’il a eu des baisses de morale et des découragements pendant la création de HOME. Aujourd’hui, je décide de lui rendre hommage pour la personne géniale qu’il a été. En faisant part de toutes mes condoléances à ses proches, et en espérant qu’il repose en paix là où il se trouve...

[outofoxygen]

Revisiting HOME

I’m revisiting HOME, because I felt I was too unfair in my last review of it. As such, I will be ignoring my last attempt to review it. [Spoilers for HOME]

HOME is an OFF fangame created by FelixtheJudge, who also was the creator of several Don’t Starve Together mods, which are now left sadly unfinished. I will note that Felix has unfortunately passed, and give my regards to those who knew him. I would also like to mention I have nothing against FelixtheJudge himself, and I think the guy was a very talented individual. Now then, preferring not to dwell on depressing matters, I shall turn towards reviewing HOME.

Part 1: Plot Synopsis

HOME is a fangame in which you play as Pablo, or The Judge. After being awoken in Zone 0 from his rest, he goes outside to find The Batter standing before him, who then declares his intent to purify the world. After The Judge applauds his goal, he then marches back inside, only for a premonition of The Batter’s potential for harm to hit him. He then chooses to head off to Zone 1 to warn the Guardian.

Zone 1 mostly plays out similarly, just this time you venture to find Alain (I’ll talk about him later) in the basement of Pentel. You then voyage off to the Meatworks to fight Pentel himself. Of course, you head off to Shachihata, meet The Batter and optionally fight him on a roof, then go off to Alma where you fight Dedan.

Zone 2 also plays out similarly, this time allowing you to wander the residential area instead of being booted out quickly. You then head off to the Library, where Japhet reveals himself on the roof. This time, however, you rescue Valerie (somehow alive) and head off after allowing The Batter to kill him.

I don’t need to repeat myself for Zone 3, do I? This time, you don’t get the pipe minigame though. Sad.

Zone 4 is, however, a new zone. It’s edgy, and it’s full of diseased inhabitants and crazed gunmen. In an OFF fangame. If you haven’t played HOME and haven’t reached Zone 4, let me tell you, I’m not joking about that. The lovable elsen are depressed, diseased, and/or a gun-toting maniac looking to riddle your cats with bullet holes. You fight Shachihata, the apparent postman turned into a crazed burnt general in Zone 4, before heading up to fight the Guardian herself, a kind-of lame Hugo ripoff. Oh sorry, you fight The Witness, a fluffy black cat with an add-on. You’re supposed to snipe the add-on, by the way, because The Witness is overpowered as all living hell. So after suffering through fighting The Witness, our favorite capped, bat-toting Batter runs up and smacks The Witness real hard with his cast-iron.

Then, you’re forced to go on a romp through the purified zones where The Judge decides The Batter is awful, despite being rude and churlish to The Batter before he ran around the purified zones. Well, you finally head off to the Courtroom, a depressing slog.

Anyways, flowery bits aside, you fight The Batter in the end (removing the choice) and you win. There’s two endings, one where the Judge’s party gets wiped in The Batter’s dying moments, leaving The Judge a sick puppy. The other ending is a happy-go-lucky ‘the world got fixed, yay’ that lacks the potency of OFF’s ending.

Part 2: Characters

The Judge - Our favorite enigmatic, eloquent, knowledgeable feline. Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep a character enigmatic whilst keeping them playable, so.. he’s an eloquent, knowledgeable feline. However, The Judge has to pause every five goddamn seconds to get exposition, so he’s an eloquent feline. I guess it works. Either way, he’s The Judge we all know, this time just with a pure-good paint on.

Alain - Here’s where I get to praise HOME for a character. Alain is written entirely as a neutral character. He is only looking out for himself, and he only seems to really care about himself. He’s selfish and starving, and only follows along with The Judge to prevent himself from starving. He is, however, loyal enough to stick around, and in the end chooses to stick around with The Judge and crew. I’d say he turns out well enough in his ending.

Valerie - To be honest, he’s played as The Judge 2.0. Of course, from what we know, Valerie was a shy, soft-spoken cat who enjoyed books and soft, cool colors. However, here, he basically acts like a second Judge. I, to put it bluntly, think it’d be better if he was killed by Japhet. Yeah, The Judge might have sat around on Zone 2′s roof, screaming at the top of his lungs, pretending the echoes belong to someone, someone he used to know, but his party could’ve dragged him off to finish the game. It’d give him a reason to hate The Batter. (Edit for clarification: The reason being: The Batter is just standing around and doesn’t even assist him in helping to remove Japhet from Valerie. That’s what I was thinking when I wrote this.)

Jozlyn - This.. ‘character’ is the anti-Alain. An original addition, Jozyln is a ‘cute’ ditzy lunatic with barely any good character to speak of. She’s annoying, the token girl, and basically serves little purpose other than filling up The Judge’s party. Every time her facesprite appears next to a textbox in the game, I feel like I’ll have a stroke and an aneurysm at similar times. That hideous ‘:3′ she includes next to every. fucking. sentence. is nowhere near charming or endearing, and instead gives me minor brain damage and a serious migraine. Honestly, I hope no one on this Earth likes Jozlyn, because if you like Jozlyn, then I don’t think you know what a good character is.

The Batter - Yet another point where I get angered intensely by HOME’s lacking characterization. The Batter in OFF is a focused and dedicated purifier. His mission is not presented as wholly evil; in fact, it can be viewed as good in some circumstance. However, I hold the stance that The Batter’s mission was entirely neutral, as he did destroy the impurity, but also took down the whole broken world of OFF with him. However, HOME took the liberty of personally raising its middle finger in The Batter’s face, then shooting him in the knees and head. By that, I mean it took no time to examine the good and neutral parts of his mission, and instead painted him as purely evil. The Batter is, even worse, portrayed as a horrendous dick. Yes, The Batter was entirely apathetic to the suffering of elsen. Yes, he clearly didn’t care about the loss of innocent lives. But, in the end, The Batter wasn’t so much of a dick as he was an apathetic stoic until the very end.

The Witness - This character.. she also disgusts me. For a different reason. The Witness is a shoved-in plot device and, unsurprisingly, massive mary sue. For some unknown reason, The Witness is inexplicably overpowered, and cannot suffer damage lest she renders your party entirely wiped by her overpowered abilities. RNG forbid you get a status effect on her, because if you so much as touch her with a single one, she will be ‘targetted’. See, if The Witness is Targetted, she will automatically perform her annoying 100 damage attack, thus causing annoying amounts of damage just because she may have gotten poisoned, stopped, insane.. Just don’t get a single status effect on her, or else she’ll maul you to shit.

Part 3: Basic Enemies

I’ll make this simple: The basic enemies don’t fit in with OFF. At all. Aside from odd style differences at random points, only a few enemies have the hand-drawn and quirky feel of OFF’s enemies. I couldn’t imagine fighting a Burnt and one of HOME’s countless enemies side-by-side. The Plague Doctors, at least, look slightly like they come from OFF.

Part 4: Merchants

Okay. If you’ve read my criticism about merchants from CONFINIUM: Act 1, then you know I hate how that masked chucklefuck always seems to he-he-he his way into every single goddamned fangame from here to Mars. Is it that hard, that physically excruciating to try to think up another merchant who you can’t just copy-paste that whole ‘Show me the colour of your credits’ speech from? Zacharie is a well-made character, and I have no problem with the way he’s written in OFF itself. However, every single fangame has to have him ripped straight from OFF, with a bland ‘amigo amigo he he’ personality.

Oh, and there’s another merchant named ‘Viola’, but I don’t think she’s too important. Especially since I hate her character too, because it’s blander than the taste of bleached cardboard. By the way, I think I mentioned that Viola was a tumor, and I stand by that fully.

Part 5: Lore

It takes place in the world of OFF, so obviously it uses OFF’s lore. Zone 4, also Bordeaux, is basically just a hellhole because a disease came along and screwed over the whole place. Let’s just hurry along to Part 6 so I can finish up.

Part 6:  Does This Game Fit In With OFF?

Does this game fit in with OFF.. Does it? I’m partly confused about what to say. There’s points where I think HOME is genuinely clever and enjoyable, and I don’t hate the story. Unlike CONFINIUM: Act 1, I clearly don’t enjoy HOME immensely, but I also don’t hate the fangame, to be honest. I guess it could? But I’m not sure on that.

Part 7: Conclusion

Now that I’ve gotten this far, what else can I say? This revisit just reminded me that it has more than 1 tumor (specifically 4), and it reminded me that there is a few things I like about HOME.

However, would I recommend this fangame? Maybe. Probably. I’d recommend it as an example of a highly polished fangame, and as an example of an okay fangame, but not as an example of a good fangame. There’s better fangames, and I know plenty.

Altogether, play CONFINIUM or NEW instead of HOME if you want. That’s this revisit wrapped up.