[Microblogging] A Hotdog in Time

Just like with Mew, it took a special spawn event ex machina to bail me out of one of the final challenges, and even then I'm still coming in about a month or two behind a lot of friends I know. At least I finally got it, though?

This Celebi isn't particularly great stat or moveset wise, but let's be honest; Celebi is kind of a bragging rights reward anyway. Even a perfect one isn't exactly powerful, you know? Besides, what am I going to do, get another one?

Nah, the point of this quest is to say yay I got Celebi :3 and then stuff it in the back of your box somewhere.



If you want to talk about acquisitions I might actually use in battle, the practical grand prize today was another Charged TM, which (along with the one I'd been saving because it took two rolls to get this right) finally let me fix the moveset of this absolute unit of an Entei here. And now that he's near-perfect, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on him inheriting the 34 or so Rare Candy I'd been quietly stockpiling while trying to decide who gets it all. Still more growing to do, of course, but I guess I'll need to do more raids to feed him the rest of the way.

Walking is reserved for the next long while because I caught a perfect 15/15/15 IV Magikarp, you see. 8|

COMPLETE: Basilica de Sangre

As xyzzysqrl has pointed out, it's IFComp time!

I am normally not a huge IF buff, nor was I even familiar with IFComp before Xyzzy pointed it out. My only experience with last year's contest was "The Dragon Will Tell Your Future Now," which I'm not linking to because it was a literally unwinnable troll game that got my hopes up before revealing itself as such. But something about this year's "You only need to play five games, come on please get everyone you know (even if they're not normally IF people) to join in, we're gonna have so many judges and everyone will pitch in and it'll be great" sell convinced me. So I hit the random shuffle button... I was going to shuffle three times just to make sure it was really shuffled, but shuffle #2 landed on Basilica de Sangre by Bitter Karella and I mean come on, look at it. With that cover art and that premise, you know I had to check this one out.

Like the blurb says, you are a demon trying to rescue your mom from the infamous convent. There's a possession mechanic that basically turns the game into an IF version of Space Station Silicon Valley, where you surf around a ton of bodies and use each one to solve puzzles. If I have any criticism, it's that the high number of NPCs makes it somewhat difficult to keep track of which person is where and who's keeping what inventory items, leading to a lot of backtracking in the form of "Crap, I need the sexton for this. I left him in the... kitchen, I think? Wait, no... hold on, who has the brass key again?"

That's a minor complaint, though, and the rest of the game is great. The premise and gameplay gimmicks are creative, the puzzles are clever without being walkthrough-requiring obtuse, the sense of accomplishment when you make progress is nice, and the ending is sweet and satisfying.

I'm not going to spend like eleven pages on this one because it's a one-hour game jam competition title and I still have four more to play, but yeah we're off to a great start.

Edit: Oh, there's a technical engine failure note that's worth mentioning as a warning but not worth holding against this game, because I don't think it's a game-specific flaw: The "play online" mode kind of chugs and takes a bit to return responses sometimes, and one time it froze on me entirely, making me restart. Just download the game (and Quest) and play it offline instead. I didn't experience any issues that way.

COMPLETE: Haywire

IFComp time continues. Full disclosure: After the time I spent on Basilica de Sangre, I found this one by shuffling the entries and then scrolling down to the first one I found whose listed length was "15 minutes or less." I just kind of wanted something small and nibbly.

Haywire by Peregrine Wade is a short CYOA about a homeless street magician that quickly turns into a superhero story, or at least it can, depending on choices. Certain plot beats are railroaded, but the ending is not--you absolutely can lose the final battle and get yourself killed (or end up not running into that guy at all.) The good ending (or at least the one I got) is satisfying, and... yeah, this sure is a small and nibbly little thing all right. But it's good.

(Playing this one online totally works, by the way. Maybe Basilica de Sangre's site version was a unique problem? I'll experiment with this more. Three entries to go.)

COMPLETE: Finding Paradise

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Let it be said that playing a Freebird game is like shooting yourself in the heart, the best possible way.

Finding Paradise is... you know, I actually can't say a lot about this one, for two reasons. One, davidn, jesterelijah, and I all voiced a playthrough of this in Team Hatoful style, which I will be editing together and posting one video at a time over the next little while. I don't expect them to get a ton of responses here. Most people who read this journal either haven't experienced To the Moon+Minisodes and A Bird Story yet (which are all 100% required reading for this) or they're just allergic to hearing real life human voices in Let's Play videos. Oh, well, I'm making and posting them anyway. *fwee*

The other reason is that Finding Paradise is one of those games where even the major themes and the realization of "wait, is this plot going there?" are major spoilers. Please play this blind as possible. If you've played To the Moon, it's that but with a new patient, and that's all you need to know going in. If you haven't, then play that instead. Don't start a series in the middle, why would you do that.

I can talk about the technical stuff, I guess? Like all Freebird games, Finding Paradise is an emotional tear-filled story-driven RPGMaker walking sim. Everything you could say about the assets, from the sprite and pixel art to the music, to even the cinematography is breathtaking. Someone made a game with thoughtfully chosen camera angles and dramatic zooming and panning and focusing worthy of Academy Award consideration, in RPGMaker. Everything that went into this game is as beautiful as the story it uses all those assets to craft.

And that story... God.

Please experience this series. It's... just... you need to see this, okay? I wish I could tell you why you do but mmfrhnnmfm.

And if you're actually interested, the Team Hatoful Finding Paradise playlist is here.

In conclusion: Ow.