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Well, it is currently 10:17 am, July 31, 2024 as I am writing this intro. I was called a slacker, and hey slackur's not me, it's my dad! So I need to finish this article that I have been slacking on to prove that I am not slacking. That'll show those internet randos!
...right?
Anyway... here's your monthly selection of words, four months late, this time including the words "Pizza", "Tower", and "metroidvania" more often than usual. Enjoy.
Hey all. As mentioned in my previous article, I have been playing waaay too much Pizza Tower. Like, an astronomical amount. I have beaten the game three times back-to-back, (and am currently considering starting a fourth playthrough!) without it feeling monotonous at all. I absolutely love this game, and I think it is probably my new favorite. There are countless reasons why I just adore this piece of pi media, but for the sake of brevity, I'd like to boil it down to just a couple: the game's controls, gameplay and feel, pacing, humor, and soundtrack.
First of all, let's talk about Pizza Tower's controls, gameplay, and feel.. Pizza Tower feels perfectly suited to its controls (at least on a gamepad). With the decently lengthy tutorial for a 2D game, I came off at first thinking that the controls were a bit clunky, and while they do take some getting used to, after only the first one or two levels I was already praising the game's controls and feel. The decision to map the run button to the right trigger at first feels a bit off, yet if you look at other games, especially first-person shooters, you'll find that a lot of the time, the button you'll press most of the time is the right trigger, which makes sense, as that's the button your pointer finger goes on. Most of the time, we use our pointer fingers the most; when I say that, it might make you question the fact that you're running more than jumping in a platformer game, which as is the case with many other platformers, is the case for Pizza Tower, although in its case you are basically running the entire time unless you are specifically looking for something, which is something I really enjoy about the way the game plays. Speaking of which...
Finally, a paragraph break! I can actually talk about the gameplay! First of all, I'd like to clear up one thing: Pizza Tower is not really a metroidvania, and (in my opinion) isn't really like Wario Land as a lot of people seem to make it out to be. I know this because I don't really enjoy either. Both have some design choices and just generally things about them that I don't really hate, but just don't really like. A common design choice in a lot of metroidvanias would be to have a main attack that stops your movement for a second or so. I bet that if you think about it, you can easily come up with a few examples of what I'm talking about: in the original Castlevania, the attack that slows you down would be the whip that everyone is familiar with. I really dislike the whip in the Castlevania series, mostly for the fact that it just slows down the gameplay and forces you to stop focusing on the platforming just to knock out a few enemies and then just get back to regular platforming, which I feel just kind of slows the game down. I get that the levels are built around it, and I definitely feel the quality of the games; they're just not really my thing. The same thing applies with games I've tried in the vain of the Castlevania series, like Hollow Knight' they just don't really have the type of gameplay I'm looking for in a 2D action game. 3D games with this gameplay though, can be really well made, and I have tried a couple and enjoyed them. I'm not trying to be overly critical of the Castlevania-esque games, but hopefully you can see my reasoning here. There's also a type of game where the main attack doesn't slow down the game, but rather speeds it up, which is also not really a decision I like. I'll go more in-depth about that later.
Metroid, the other half of the term "metroidvania", does this a bit better: instead of stopping or slowing down the gameplay with the whip, now you have a blaster, that allows you to shoot enemies that may be coming at you from any location one of the specifically eight cardinal directions. However, even with Metroid's (and games similar to it, like Gato Roboto's) setup, I still dislike this gameplay style. It makes you have to stop paying attention to platforming and pay more attention to gunning down enemies, shmup style; which yes, I know this is a crime worthy of the unspeakable here, but I don't like shmups, and thus, by proxy, I dislike these Metroid-styled games.
In terms of gameplay, my last compare-and-contrast victim is Wario Land. I have tried a bit of both of the Super Mario Land games and have enjoyed what I have played. I have never stuck to one because at the times I tried them, I had some other game that I wanted to play. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3's claim to be a Super Mario Land game is unreasonable, as the two series do not play like each other at all. Wario Land's gameplay boils down to spamming a button that allows you to do a short sprint, during which you can start ramming into things, running them over, hurting enemies, and other such silly shenanigans.
It is this short boost that is what I hate about most action-based platformers. It completely changes your momentum, and often makes the game feel less focused on the actual moment-moment platforming as opposed to combat. I often find myself falling off of platforms simply because I tried to attack an enemy, upset ant the fact that I can't do any other actions while attacking, and generally just hating the gameplay that many other people will call some of the best in gaming.
I do believe that most of this is just me. A lot of people get a lot of enjoyment out of these games, and I respect that, and my thoughts here are not even universally true; a game that does the shoot-and-move problem I find with the Metroid series well is Cuphead. My only issues with that game are skill issues.
So what does Pizza Tower the subject of this article, do differently? What sets it apart?
The gameplay and feel of Pizza Tower are both silky smooth. In Pizza Tower, the levels are primarily speed and skill based, with an emphasis on platforming. If you want to play for all of the P ranks, you will find yourself speeding through the levels, having fun platforming and absolutely knocking all of the enemies out of your way as you race at Mach 4 against the combo timer.
This is similar to how I would usually play Mario games, which is probably where I find my enjoyment out of both games: speeding through the levels and trying to find secrets along the way.
Let's address the context I just spent like 4 paragraphs building up and then immediately seemingly discarded. Why is Pizza Tower's combat system any different from the Wario Land games'? What about Metroid?
Pizza Tower prioritizes platforming first. Above all else, it is a platformer, and a quite fast-paced one at that. It never claims to be a metroidvania or anything similar. The gameplay shows it too: although the game does have the normal speed-changing attack, it also has options like their equivalent of Ground Pounds and the main thing that you see people doing in this game: running.
Pizza Tower's running it what sets it apart from all those other games. It adds to the controls, because the way they were done, it really does feel like you're operating a "fat balding italian" running at Mach 4. it adds to the overall gameplay, because blasting through the levels at 2,964 mph absolutely feels amazing. The levels are perfectly designed against the running speed to the point where each level still feels linear, but also very open with lots of exploration, creating a balance that gets very, very addicting.
ohright this article wasnt just about the controls and gameplay
uh
Pizza Tower's pacing also feels amazing. My first playthrough, I was a bit disappointed at its apparently short length, but if I can't accurately describe how packed full of content and extra challenges this game is, look at the development timeline for a bit and you'll see just how much content is in this game from how long it took to develop, even with... checks notes the help of 2,532 patrons each paying $10 a month.
This game seriously is packed full of content and challenges to go through. Even if at first it seems small, (the game only has five worlds), there are loads of achievements, clothes, and higher and higher ranks and FINAL JUDGMENTs to get. With the pacing of five worlds, and each level only taking about 10 minutes to beat (if you're an explorer like me), you will find yourself replaying through the game multiple times to try and see every bit of content the game has to offer. The game is perfectly set up for this, and even gives you rewards for getting faster times than in your previous save files.
Additionally, the humor in this game is exceptionally executed and several sequences had me laughing my butt off before realizing that I was still in control and then dying. This game's artstyle meshes perfectly with over-the-top drawings, something which it takes full advantage of, and so oftentimes I'll be guffawing at some of the choices of humor in this game. Unfortunately, it uses profanity for humor sometimes, which I am wholeheartedly against. I intend to make a mod to completely remove profanity from the game, considering my familiarity with GameMaker. (I have used it for a commercial game, and am currently building a second with it.)
Lastly, the soundtrack in this game is legitimately the best one that I have ever heard. Pizza Tower gets this a lot, but it's true. I listen to the songs from the soundtrack significantly more than other game's, because they are that much better than other games' songs. I like it even more than Toby Fox's work, which is a sentence I'd never thought I'd say. If you don't want to buy the game, I implore you buy the soundtrack. The composer, Ronan "Mr. Sauceman" de Castel, at first wasn't proud of any of his music, but he decided to submit a demo of the now extremely popular song "It's Pizza Time!" to the developers of the then-recently-started Pizza Tower project, got on the team, and has produced several lovely works of art for us all to enjoy. Do yourself a favor and listen to it, please.
I've been koola, and if I don't post for the next 4-8 months, I'm not dead. I'm just working on something to do with "planes."
(That was a total of 1,768 words. Does that count as not slacking?)
Hey. I'm koola. I already forgot to do my first two articles of the year. So that's fun.
Something I've been thinking about recently is the remaster. What does "remaster" even mean, why are there so many of them, and what is the difference between one and a "remake" or "rerelease"?
First, let's start with remasters, as there are a lot of things claiming to be remasters.
The simple definition of "remaster" in this day and age is simply the rerelease of a game. I argued with myself a lot writing that sentence, because you would assume that for something to be called "Remastered" it would have to have some changes, right? There are many different types of remasters, but I find they can be easily categorized as rereleases, HD rereleases, and full-on remakes.
There are very few games considered to be remasters that are simply rereleases (excluding collections of classic games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Cowabunga Collection or Mega Man Legacy Collection.
A good example of a game considered a remaster that is simply a rerelease is the video game simply titled moon. Originally released in Japan only on the PlayStation, the game got what most consider to be a remaster in 2019 that would port it to the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC and add a full English translation. Ever since I started playing the game, a thought lingered in the back of my mind: "Why do people consider this a "remaster"?".
moon's rerelease in 2019 added a couple of things: a song select that allowed you to pick from a couple of area theme songs from throughout the game (similar to Earthbound's Sound Stone, if you know what that is), and a border, because the game was originally in 4:3 (being a PS1 game) that you could slightly adjust the position of through the settings menu. Upon reading that, you may wonder why the game was even bothered to be call itself a remaster. Plot twist: it didn't. The 2019 rerelease of moon claims to be exactly that. The only additional thing it claims to have is a full English translation, which it does have. (A fact that I am extremely grateful for, as I am a resident of the United States of America and thus only speak English.)
Next, let's talk about HD rereleases. A good recent example of an HD rerelease is Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is an emulated collection of games (specifically Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, contained in a small little package to celebrate the Mario series's 35th anniversary. Although I do like this game, I would not consider HD rereleases "remasters" in the literal definition of the word, as they aren't remaking the game, and most of the time they aren't even running natively.
Lastly, let's talk about full-on remakes. These are what most people meant when "remasters" first came on the scene, and that's because that's what most of them are. These are remakes of the original from the ground-up, remaking every aspect of the game to be in-line with modern standards. Oftentimes, these also come with an easy mode or the removal of lives from the game. These are my favorite, and in my opinion the only ones deserving of the title "remaster".
When it comes to remasters in general, I think they're a good thing, because it helps people who may have never heard of the game before try it out and see if they like it. A game's age doesn't matter as long as the game is fun, after all, and for that I am grateful for remasters.
I've been koola, and "Re-Pac" isn't a word.
(Sorry for the lateness and rushed state of this article. I've been focusing a lot on things going on in real life, and have also been playing waaay too much Pizza Tower...)
The Sega Dreamcast was a short-lived but beloved console that had a surprisingly rich library of horror games. Here are my picks for the top 5 horror games for the Sega Dreamcast, in descending order of awesomeness.
5. Blue Stinger
Blue Stinger is a survival horror game that takes place on a remote island where a meteor has crashed, unleashing a horde of mutated creatures. You play as either Eliot G. Ballade, a former special forces agent, or Dogs Bower, a beefy sailor, as you explore the island and fight off the monsters. The game has a cheesy B-movie vibe, with over-the-top voice acting, ridiculous dialogue, and absurd plot twists. The gameplay is a mix of action, puzzle-solving, and exploration, with a variety of weapons and items to use. Blue Stinger is a fun and campy game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's a big part of its charm.
4. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a reboot of the classic horror series that started on the PC. The game follows Edward Carnby, a paranormal investigator, and Aline Cedrac, a university professor, as they travel to Shadow Island to investigate the death of a friend. The game is divided into two scenarios, one for each character, that offer different perspectives and paths through the island. The game features a dark and atmospheric setting, with creepy sound effects and music, and a dynamic lighting system that uses your flashlight as a key gameplay element. The game also has plenty of clever puzzles, as well as a healthy dose of combat against the island's ghastly inhabitants. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a solid and spooky game that pays homage to the original series while updating it for a new generation.
3. D2
D2 is a sequel to the obscure D, a horror adventure game that was released on the 3DO, Sega Saturn, and PS1. The game stars Laura, a young woman who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, only to find herself in a bizarre and dangerous situation. The game is a mix of genres, with elements of survival horror, RPG, and adventure. It also has some stunning (for their time) cinematic cutscenes, with impressive graphics and voice acting, and some very creepy moments. The game isn't terribly long, clocking in at a little over 10 hours, but it features a complex and surreal story that touches on themes of loss, identity, and drug abuse. D2 was a very unique and ambitious game that offers a surreal and somber experience, somewhat similar to the Silent Hill series.
2. Illbleed
Illbleed is a horror comedy game that parodies the genre and breaks the fourth wall. The game takes place in a twisted amusement park called Illbleed, where the attractions are designed to scare and kill the visitors. You play as Eriko Christy, a fearless girl who is challenged by her friends to enter Illbleed and survive. The game has 6 levels, each based on a different horror trope, such as a haunted house, killer doll, giant worms, and a Toy Story from hell. The game has a lot of humor and satire, with references to horror movies, games, and pop culture. It also has a very unique gameplay mechanic, where you have to use your senses to detect and avoid the traps and dangers in the park. The game also has a lot of secrets and surprises, such as multiple unlockable characters, alternate endings, and a bonus minigame. Illbleed is a hilarious and inventive game that simultaneously mocks and celebrates the horror genre.
1. Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Resident Evil: Code Veronica is the fourth installment in the legendary survival horror series, and the first one to be released on the Dreamcast. The game follows Claire Redfield, a survivor of the Raccoon City incident, and Chris Redfield, her brother and a member of the anti-bioterrorism group S.T.A.R.S., as they uncover the secrets of the Umbrella Corporation and their bioweapons. The game is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 2, and features many returning characters and locations, as well as new ones. It also introduces a new 3D engine, with dynamic camera angles and improved graphics. Code Veronica features a long and epic story, with multiple scenarios and locations, and a lot of action and suspense. The game also has some puzzles and exploration, as well as a variety of enemies and bosses, including the iconic Tyrant. Resident Evil: Code Veronica is a masterpiece of the genre, and the best survival horror game on the Dreamcast, in my humble opinion.
While these 5 are my favorites, there are even more horror games on the Dreamcast. If you're a fan of the genre, Sega's final console definitely has a lot to offer!
There is a wide variety of answers to the question "What makes a good video game?". It may be the controls, or the gameplay, or the story, or any number of things.
...This is not the first time I've opened an article like that.
In my article about F.I.S.H. from all the way back in May 2022, I started the article with something along those lines. In that article, I went on to explain how each of those came together to make F.I.S.H. at that time my favorite video game. (I actually also did something similar for my article about This Way Madness Lies.)
I went on to conclude that because F.I.S.H. met all those requirements, it was my new favorite game. In fact, that was even in the title of the article. In retrospect, I think I was a bit overzealous about F.I.S.H. at that time; I had just found a new game that went into my list of "good games" and tried to claim automatically that it was my number one favorite game.
I have, since then, played many a game that has fallen into that spot. They usually only last in there for a few weeks before they get replaced by something different and more noteworthy; this might be due to the fact that sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between "favorite" and "this current thing I'm liking".
Ever since I wrote that article, I've been thinking a lot about this concept of favorites vs. current likings, and I think I finally found a game that has managed to survive the couple-week survival time of "favorite game" and has triumphed as a Good Game: Trombone Champ.
(I am writing this review after beating both the Switch and PC versions and getting every achievement on PC.)
The first thing I wanna clear up is that Trombone Champ is not similar to Wii Music. It feels like everyone makes that comparison when they first see this game. It is indeed a very tempting comparison to make, due to the two game's immediate apparent similarity: both use Mii-looking characters, both involve music, and both are inherently silly games. However, I feel the comparison should end there.
The gameplay of the games are very different; in Wii Music, the gameplay boils down to just wagging your Wii Remote to the "beat" of the music.
In Trombone Champ, the gameplay is wildly different: you are moving your mouse to control a cursor, overlapping a note, clicking to toot the trombone, and thus actually playing your music. That's actually one of the taglines of the game. This leads me into a point; yay, transitions!
In Trombone Champ, you're not following along with the music, you are actually playing the music. This fact defines a core aspect of what I love about Trombone Champ: the game actively gives you reason to play well. In most rhythm games, not playing a song well isn't the end of the world, you just hear less of that instrument. In this game, if you are playing badly, you will feel it, because the entire main lead of most of the songs has just disappeared. Going back to the main point, playing the actual music is fun and enjoyable because you're not penalized for just going hog wild and adding little extra toots in there. You can play the song however you want.
Another area I want to focus on is difficulty. Most rhythm games will up the difficulty to insane amounts just because they can. In Trombone Champ, most of the songs are not difficult once you get used to the controls and find a good sensitivity. There are a good couple difficult ones, however most of the songs are easy, and the amount of easy ones are even increasing with future content updates. Additionally, you can play any song at any time after completing the tutorial. I often find myself in rhythm games unlocking a new level, beating it, and thinking that I could've done it before the harder level before it, so this is a nice change of pace.
Remember about five seconds ago when I mentioned "future content updates"? Yeah, that's yet another thing that this game has got going for it. Additional, free content is something I feel all games should have. The more content that you add, the more that people will want to play and come back. It's the reason why games like Minecraft and Terraria are so popular. I think that rhythm games are one of the best choices for games that could receive more free content later down the road, due to the way that they are often played: people will often play them to see if they can "Perfect" all of the tracks. Trombone Champ has been getting two new free tracks about every three months for about a year now. They did say in their most recent update that they were going to slow down in that regard, so maybe this point should count for less now, but I still think it's good.
Lastly, Trombone Champ is very moddable, and has officially-backed mod support. When I say "officially-backed", I mean not that the developers are making official mods or have an official song editor (although an official song editor is being worked on, along with Steam Workshop support, for which I am very excited!), I mean that the developers are actually working with the mod creators to make sure that the mods work and are not actively trying to take the mods down. I feel like mods are a right of passage for published video games. They will happen, and it's up to the developers to decide if they want to try to stop them or embrace them and have a thriving mod community that people come to often. The way that I said that makes it seem like people should always support mods, which is what I think, but sometimes it can make paid DLC seem less inviting. In any case the developers of Trombone Champ handle modding very well, in my opinion: they embrace it, and have specifically made certain tweaks to the game to ensure mods run and behave the best they can.
All around, Trombone Champ has the perfect mix of community content, official content, and fun gameplay to make it one of my new personal favorite games. I highly recommend it.
I've been koola, and wait, did I just get all my articles in for a year?!!?!?!?
(YES I DID! Unfortunately September's article looks like it came out in October, but that's because I submitted it at like 11:30 EST. See y'all in '24!)
Hello. In the midst of all the talks about a potential Switch 2, I'd like to talk a bit about the Nintendo Switch (OLED Model).
I've had my Switch OLED for about two years now (wow! already?) and here's some of my thoughts on it.
Before I got my Switch OLED, I was watching some videos about it, and the number one most brought-up topic was the screen. At the time, I thought "What's so cool about a screen with individually lit pixels? The blacks are better, and that's it?" After getting my hands on it, however, I can personally say that the Switch OLED's screen looks phenomenally better than the regular Switch's screen. Not only does the screen not have that huge annoying bezel, but it feels like the screen just pops out with color. Blacks, obviously, look really good on it too; especially in games that feature black heavily such as Gato Roboto or UNDERTALE, that feature black heavily, you can really tell the huge difference. Sometimes when a game fades to black for a long time, (such as the case with moon's loading screens) I've thought that I accidentally turned the console off.
Another big selling point of the Switch OLED is the improved kickstand. I always hated the original Switch's kickstand, and I can say that this aspect of the system is also greatly improved upon. Honestly, with my original Switch, I almost never used the kickstand because whenever I would try, I would either knock the stand off or make my Switch fall in the process. Most of the stand's use for me was just something as a fidget. One day, I was fidgeting with the stand while I was really tired, fell asleep, and when I woke up later that day the stand was gone. I later found the stand under my bed a couple hours after I got my Switch OLED, ironically.
The Switch OLED's stand is a big step-up from the original stand. It is almost as wide as the console itself, allowing for extra stability, and is made of metal, not the cheap plastic-y substance that the original Switch's variant uses. I find myself using the stand very often for things, such as playing with the Joy-Cons detached, or with them sideways for games like TowerFall.
Lastly, the storage is doubled from the regular Switch. Whether this means anything to you depends on whether you are a digital collector or a physical collector. Obviously, that is not really a question, considering the website I am writing this review on, but I find (with my sadly mostly digital collection) that no matter what games you're playing, you're still probably going to need a microSD card anyway. If you only play physical games then maybe you could get around with 64GB of storage, but nowadays most physical Switch games have some portion of the game as a download anyway, so you're pretty much required to have a microSD card if you play more than five games on your Switch.
A question that is brought up often is whether the OLED Model is worth the upgrade. I personally think if you already have the regular Switch, then you're fine. The screen, stand, and storage are the big selling points here. If you're just looking for a good console to play games on, then just stick with your regular Switch.
I've been koola, and people say the Switch OLED is trying to copy the PS5.
(Isn't that just the style now, anyways?)
Hypnospace Outlaw is a wonderful, splendid video game.
It is quite possibly the most human-feeling game, in my opinion, that I have ever played. The only game that I have beat that has gotten close is Persona 5 Royal, and that's a huge-budget game made by one of the most respected companies in the video game industry.
As the developers put it, Hypnospace Outlaw is a "90s internet simulator". In my words, Hypnospace Outlaw is a masterfully-crafted story told through the medium of various 90s Internet pages.
The game starts with you signing up to be a rules enforcer for a forum that you can browse while you sleep. Named "Hypnospace", it has several different zones assigned to its "residents", as they are called, who each have their own, very 90s, personal pages. Your goal is to track down and remove all content that violates the rules of Hypnospace.
Each of the residents feel very distinct. I wasn't around in the 90s, but a lot of people I have listened to and watched attest to the accurateness of the pages. Stuff like rudimentary page design, obnoxious music, relentless typos, and more litters the pages: things that people look back on and think of as the golden age of the internet.
The beauty shines in the humanity of these residents. They aren't just meaningless characters who are only there to fill a role; each and every one of them has their own struggles and faults. They respond to actions of you and your company with their own genuine reasons and, like us, will get upset if you as an enforcer do something that they deem unjust. They each have their own likes and dislikes, which some of them make evident and others you have to search for, and just like our internet, there are hidden pages, leaks of companies, and people making joke pages just to show off their programming ability.
A good example of this humanity that I keep coming back to is the first case: you are assigned to take down copyright violations of a fictional old cartoon character, and after doing some digging you find they are just kids' drawings that their teacher posted. The teacher, thinking that she did nothing wrong, starts to lash out about it and eventually gets her whole zone to start a revolt against these "unfair policies". This is something I could genuinely see happening in the real world.
Without diving into spoiler territory as I admittedly often do, the story goes into places you would not expect. I came out of it feeling confused at first, but the more I think about it, the more the ending makes sense for where the character development goes.
Overall, Hypnospace Outlaw has one of my favorite stories of any game, and I highly recommend you check it out.
I've been koola, and I apologize for the long wait time and short article. There's been a lot of games that I've been starting, but the only one that I have finished was this one, and I didn't want to dive into spoiler territory.
(I wanna see a real life Trennis game. That sounds like a fun idea, honestly.)
"Oh hey, just remembered I haven't gotten my article in for this month!"
looks at clock
8:30 PM, September 30
"Oh poop"
Hi. It's koola. You may know me from "wow this game is good" and "wow Toby Fox is amazing" and "something something music".
I made a game called OMNIFATE. Originally, I wanted to document the game's entire development on my blog page, but that did not end up happening, sadly.
I released OMNIFATE on September 9, 2023. If you want, you can pick it up right now from this link: https://store.steampowere...com/app/2521970/OMNIFATE/
I just wanted to spend some time going over its development history. Originally started as a companion project to a cancelled Game Builder Garage game, OMNIFATE's first playable version was a puzzle platformer. At the time, I was very proud of it. Looking back at it now, frankly that prototype sucked: it showed very little signs of polish (even though I had promised polish from it online), lack of originality (the first couple prototypes did not use original music), and you couldn't even die.
I worked on that version of the game for about two months, most of which was spent fine-tuning the physics. Honestly, at some point, I do want to make a platformer game, although I don't think that will happen any time soon.
That version of OMNIFATE was made in Unity. Unity is supposed to be an easy engine for newcomers to the field to learn, however nothing I wrote ever ended up working. I don't think that was the engine's fault; rather, I think it was the raw difficulty of C# for amateurs.
After about two months of development and the release of a demo publicly available prototype, I had felt like I was just growing overly tired of the project. I wanted to call it quits, and was thinking that this sort of thing is just not something a person of my age could come up with.
Fast forward a month. I was deciding what to do with the project. At the time, I had not fully realized what my favorite genre of video game is, but I had known that I had a fun time with many a turn-based RPG, so I decided to go with that. I could not find a single tutorial for RPGs in Unity, so I gave up.
In September 2021, I was considering my options. I could abandon the project directly, or start in a new engine. I looked into several options, but the one I ended up using was GameMaker Studio 2, which later officially changed its name to just GameMaker.
GameMaker seemed like a breath of fresh air. A unique workspace, tabs, no switching windows, and I could kind of understand the code! I followed a tutorial on top-down movement in GameMaker and understood about 81% of what was going on. The way the tutorial's code was structured meant that I had to have a walking animation.
I asked my friend Rain if she could draw a walking animation for the player character, and waited. And waited. And waited. She was procrastinating, but so was I. I could have just made the walking animation, but I wanted it to look nice.
I ended up waiting for seven months. I regret that timespan the most out of anything I regret throughout the development cycle, because at any point I could have just slapped up a prototype walking animation.
On one day in June 2022, I finally snapped out of it and made the dang walking animation. After that, things finally started to look up. Throughout the rest of that summer, every day I worked wholeheartedly on every aspect of the game, with the goal of releasing a demo by the end of it. I succeeded. I released a demo of OMNIFATE on GX.games on August 30, 2022, two days before my deadline. After that, I worked on the rest of the game, and completed it in March 2023.
After that, I released a trailer, and sat my butt down. I relaxed. I playtested the game multiple times, noticed several bugs, but patched only a few. (I caught the mind disease known as "procrastination" again.) I also got several other people to playtest, and promised them the bugs that they found would be fixed. (I didn't fix them.)
In one day in July, I finally saved up money for publishing on Steam. I got everything ready, and asked my parents for playtesting. They proceeded to lovingly and caringly point out every bug they saw, while I wrote them down all while crying and telling them that I couldn't fix the bugs. Looking back on it, I was being a brat to my loving and caring parents who only wanted to see a quality game released.
So I fixed every bug that was written down, and they found more. This process repeated twice before I finally felt that a genuine, final, quality product was ready. I submitted everything, and relaxed again. It was like a burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
That's where we are today. The game has released, and I'm currently working on another project, in a different genre. (*It's not the platformer.)
Thanks for reading this, and hopefully you enjoy the fruit of my (mostly) hard work.
I've been koola, and, why are some letters bolded? Those weren't bolded when I was writing the article...?
(I'm sorry for the lack of a quickly written article this month. I was mostly focusing on school and family.)
As I have noted in previous articles, my personal favorite type of video game is a turn-based role-playing game. I personally prefer the ones that are not strategy-based, but I have had some fun with all of them that I have played.
I prefer ones that change up the gameplay just a tiny bit, but not too much, have good humor, are short, and are genuinely fun. It's hard finding a good balance of all four, but there are a good few games that hit that balance (or at least get really close to it). Some examples are UNDERTALE, DELTARUNE, Helen's Mysterious Castle, and Dicey Dungeons.
There is exactly one video game company that makes games that hit all of these pillars with literally every single game I've played from them, and that company is Zeboyd Digital Entertainment. I could go all day talking about them, but this article is about their newest offering, This Way Madness Lies.
This Way Madness Lies is a turn-based RPG about Shakespeare and magical girl anime, which is funnily enough not even the strangest premise I've heard from Zeboyd. (Cthulhu saving Christmas, anyone?) This strange premise, in my opinion, already helps with the humor a lot, but even if it weren't there, I would still be laughing my butt off because almost every line in this game.
Given the subject material, you see a lot of Old English in this game, which might seem like a drag, but the game actually contains a translator for it. A minor complaint I have is that, as an English nerd, I can actually read a good majority of the Old English, and as such I have found out that some of the dialogue has a much simpler translation than I would have preferred or straight up has a different meaning. This isn't a real issue however, as even if you don't know a lot of Old English, you can mostly grab from context what the words mean.
The combat system in This Way Madness Lies is a masterclass of turn-based video game combat. Returning from other Zeboyd titles is the Unite command, in which multiple team members can combine their powers to make combat more interesting. All of these are super strong, and very fun to use.
There is no MP (or equivalent) in This Way Madness Lies, which at first might seem like a bad choice, but the way they compensate for it is very interesting, unique, and well-made. Every time you use an attack, it weakens. This is something that I think is done very well in this game. I can tell that a lot of work was put into balancing everything. Toof often, in other turn-based RPGs, I find that multiple punishments for using moves often are enforced: MP (or equivalent), and a move limit. I don't think that move limits are a good idea for turn-based RPGs, as they often ruin the fun in them: you are forced to use a different, weaker move, and this often feels very limiting. How this differs from making the move weaker is that making the move weaker punishes the use of it, but you can still feel the power of it, and oftentimes (as in the case of This Way Madness Lies) there is a skill that can refill how strong your move is.
Lastly is the length. I don't have too much to say on this one that hasn't been stated at length by countless others before me, but even ignoring our shortening attention spans, shorter games are a good thing. A lot of us don't have the time for a grand 80-hour RPG, some something that you can finish in 1/8 the time.
I very much enjoyed This Way Madness Lies, and I hope you give it a try. It is one of my favorite games now.
I've been koola, and I was recieved this game for free, so I pretty much had to review it.
(I would have positively reviewed it anyway. I love this game.)
I picked up a lot of things at CORGS-Con 2023. Such things included a DSi, The Orange Box, Mario Party DS, some amiibo, and... a Steam Link. My thinking was that it would be perfect for my setup, because I buy a lot of very interesting games on Steam that I want to show to other people, and I could also play Steam games on the big screen.
Did my wording right there make you think that this was a negative review? It is not. I LOVE the Steam Link, and I think it's one of the most underrated pieces of gaming hardware.
I hooked up my personal favorite controller (which is the Wii U Pro controller because I'm different) and it works beautifully for the most part. One issues I have is lag when there is a large amount of stuff on screen, it gets a bit laggy, but I think that's just the setup I have. I don't use it with Ethernet, which despite what some people may think, actually works fine for the most part.
I figured some people may be curious, so here's some games I have and their compatibility level:
F.I.S.H - Laggy sometimes, almost perfect
Geometry Dash - Very laggy
B.I.R.D. (Demo) - Perfect
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy - Perfect
DELTARUNE - Perfect
Plants vs. Zombies - Perfect
Operation STEEL - Laggy sometimes, almost perfect
Due to low sales, for a while there, Steam was offering them for five dollars. As such, you may have already bought one when they went for that cheap. I would recommend that you dust off your old one and give it a try. At least for me, it works way better than I thought it would.
I've been koola, and what's a Steam Deck?
(I've been playing waay too much Dicey Dungeons lately...)
Well, I bet nobody expected that Nintendo Direct to be as good as it was, huh? (Maybe I'm just too pessimistic...) Regardless, it really gave some new games to look forward to, as this summer has given rise to me actually getting up and finishing a lot of games on that good ol' backlog (as well as trying out new games Lila's Sky Ark and Dicey Dungeons, which I may or may not talk about in their own future articles), meaning that I'm kind of running low on actual new games.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is what many consider to be the highlight of that Direct. What caught a lot of people's attention (aside from the general unique art style) is the lack of a "New" on that title. Yep, just Super Mario Bros. Wonder. This is most likely the result of years of backlash that the New Super Mario Bros. series is just bad, not fun, and overall very stale, and while to some extent I do agree, I think the New Super Mario Bros. games are not as bad as people make them out to be, and I will stand on the hill that they are very fun games.
Before I start, if you'd like to consume more content relating to this topic, I'd like to point you over to Mariomikester's videos on the series. They do have language, which I do not like very much, but they are very great video essays and I highly recommend you watch them if you enjoy this article. You can find the supercut of his videos on the series here:
New Super Mario Bros.
New Super Mario Bros., colloquially known as New Super Mario Bros. DS, was released at a rather interesting time in Mario's history; we had gone about 14 years without a 2D Mario game. So, you can see that when it was announced, a lot of people were excited. I, of course, was not existent when this was happening, so I can really only look at this from the outside looking in, but having played it myself, I really enjoy it. It controls well, looks really good for a portable game from 2006, runs well, and is just an overall good game.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is actually a game that I myself have never finished. I am actually in the process of going through it right now, with the Nunchuck, which conveniently lets me talk about another point. For the most part, all of the attack buttons in New Super Mario Bros. games have been on the Y button, which is also the run button. I assume that most of us are just assuming that that is the only way to go about this, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii, specifically is you're playing with a Nunchuck, the controls that would normally be on the 1 button get split up between B on the Wii remote, and C on the Nunchuck. Run is now bound to C, and all of the attack commands (throwing a firewball, tongueing with Yoshi, etc.) are now bound to B. This sounds like it would play bad, but it actually feels really good to play.
New Super Mario Bros. 2
New Super Mario Bros. 2 is up next, which a few people might be surprised about. Actually, probably not many, because we are all collectors and know what's up with it. Either way, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the third game in the New Super Mario Bros. series, and is a very good one. Aedmittedly, this is where the series starts to get rather stale, but that's no problem with the game itself. A common complaint I see people throw at New Super Mario Bros. 2 is that it was made by a different studio than the other games in the series. I personally think it's fine, but it is noticeable. Also, as previously stated, New Super Mario Bros. 2 came after New Super Mario Bros. Wii. This is cool, but it's pretty weird that New Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn't have the ability to spinjump, as the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. U does, as well as Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS. Additionally, a topic that I find not a lot of people bring up when talking about this game is the graphics. I think that New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a beautiful-looking game.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Due to my age, New Super Mario Bros. U is the game out of these that I have played the most. It is the first HD Mario game, and because of that, it looks really good. It plays really well, has a lot of nice courses. Also, it comes with a challenge mode, which me and my older brother spend countless hours on when we were younger.
So, those are my thoughts on the New Super Mario Bros. games, and I'm very excited to see what Super Mario Bros. Wonder brings to the table.
I've been koola, and I don't know how to end this article.
(Elephant Mario isn't as cursed as a lot of people seem to think, especially if you look back and some of the previous power-ups we've gotten.)
I've always been a huge Nintendo fan, and the Mario series is one of my favorites overall.
I've also had an interest in the Gusiness Book of World Records for a while. The Gamer's Edition 2019 was the first time I heard of this new Mario movie being in production, by Illumination. In the book, they just made an offhanded comment about how Illumination came up with the Minions.
That piqued my curiosity, and I let that thought gather dust in my head for several years until mid-2021 rolled around, and Nintendo, out of the blue, just revealed the voice actors and release date for this Mario movie. I, like most, was shocked and turned off at Chris Pratt as Mario, but I was reminded he had done a good job as Emmett from The Lego Movie, so I wasn't too unhappy about it.
Fast forward about a year, and it is now October 2022. We are getting our first trailer! I was very surprised at just how high quality everything was. This is generally the same for both other trailers released.
Some day in April, (I actually forgot which), our family bought a ticket to go see the actual movie. Everything was super high quality, and even rose above my expectations. The--
SPOILER WARNING!!
Well, that was quite rude of you to cut me off like that. Anyway, as I was saying, the Bowser scenario with the pet name "Peaches" was something that I'd never really see in a Mario product, but that's actually not really a bad thing; it feels very oddly in-character for the Bowser of the Mario movie.
When I rewatched the movie yesterday, it was for a different family to celebrate one of their daughters' birthday. Aforementioned daughter we'll call K for convenience and privacy's sake.
K is a person I've known for a long time and basically have grown up with. K is also a big fan of Mario, and she had really high hopes for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. K does not have access to the majority of the internet; her only really way to get news about gaming-related stuff is the TV and the News app on her Switch.
When K, her family, and I were coming out of the theater, we were discussing the movie, and K said that the movie was good but it didn't live up to her expectations. I wondered why this could be, as we seemed to have the same experience going in. I think I know now what happened: she kept rewatching the bit that she did have and her expectations grew of the movie.
Here's another opinion I saw.
There is a person at my school with whom my personality clashes heavily. We'll call her A. When I was talking about the movie at school, A said that when she and her friends saw the movie, they absolutely hated it; they said it was the worst waste of an hour and thirty minutes they had had in a long time. At first I thought A was just trying to be mean and mess with me, but her line about her friends ALSO not liking the movie I was confused about. I don't share a lot of classes with A's friends, but I do share one. The class was going to watch a video on YouTube, and we pulled up the YouTube app, and up came Peaches from some previous activity that had totally not been of my doing (long story), and one of A's friends loudly chimes in "OH, THAT'S THE WORST SONG FROM THE WORST MOVIE!". Everybody in my friend group that had seen the movie instantly disagrees and says something positive about the movie, and an argument breaks out, which was put to rest by the teacher, and we watched the video.
I bring this up because it creates a point that I want to discuss: people who had not played the Mario games watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I think that if you don't get all of the references, you are going to have a way worse time with the movie. I still think the average optimistic viewer will like the movie, but they will probably rate the movie way less that those that do get the references. That is where I think the negative reviews are coming from; those people are paid to watch the movies from a point that is not their own, and rate them purely from a movie standpoint.
The best way to summarize this is thus: A person watching a video game adaptation without having played the game will not be able to appreciate it as much as people who have played the game.
This goes for The Cuphead Show!, The Last of Us, Uncharted, and everything else.
I've been koola, the GameCube intro for the phone was amazing.
(I'm glad they at least gave Charles Martinet a part.)
In my article "The Development of OMNIFATE", I (for about a paragraph) talked about my relatively newfound appreciation for music as a whole. So, I figured I, as a composer, would do this topic justice and give it its own article. (Also, yes, I know I already wrote an article this month, but to be honest, I'm not really proud of how that one turned out.)
(I was gonna start of this paragraph by mentioning the date when I made Wurly, but I can't remember the actual date, and my computer is literally giving me no help with that. Case and point:
Isn't technology amazing?)
When I made Wurly on [see above brackets for more information] about June 2021, I gained more of an appreciation for the true effort that goes into producing a song. Sure, there had been music I had appreciated before then, but it was mostly just Toby Fox and Jackbox soundtracks. Pretty much every game I've played since then I've had an ear for hearing the music for what it is: actual really good music.
It also helps that around 2021 I was able to create a Spotify account. I joke about having a lot of hours on YouTube, but Spotify is the service I by far have the most time on, even in just the two years I've had it. Most of my playlists on it are comprised of video game soundtracks, although recently I've added some songs from movies as well (including the Super Mario Bros Movie, which I will rewatch soon and write an article about probably next month).
Here are some of the most recent games I've played, here are my thoughts on their music.
Super Mario Land 2: Just like the rest of this game, the music has a really unique vibe to it.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: AMAZING soundtrack, with pretty much no song in it having less than a 7/10 for me. Unfortunately, it is exclusive to Bandcamp, YouTube, and Steam right now, but the developers have confirmed that the soundtrack will be coming to other streaming services later this year (...the same as 2022...).
UNDERTALE: I mentioned this in the DELTARUNE article, but Toby Fox is probably my favorite video game composer. Also, yes, I did recently replay UNDERTALE.
ARK: Survival Evolved: The music gets repetitive, but in and of themselves the songs are good.
The last part of this is being a composer myself. I'm biased against my own works (which seems counterintuitive but think about the last time you went up on stage and didn't critique yourself at least once), but I have been told by early playtesters of OMNIFATE and people I've shown my music to in general that it is very well made. I myself can't wait to release the soundtrack to OMNIFATE, but of course I do have to wait until the game is out before I can. Attempting to throw away all biases, I find my music nice to listen to and better than average, but not as good as Toby Fox or Nightmargin.
Anyway, that's enough nerding out. 
I've been koola, and go buy the OneShot Soundtrack from Bandcamp. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. DO IT, OR ELSE I'LL---[/i][/u] <- Whoopsy! This is an RF Generation glitch, not my fault. The tags are written and workiong as intended on my part.
(I just described music in a written form for a dozen-ish paragraphs. If you're feeling tired of reading about music and want to hear some, here's a gift from me to you. )
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Posted on Apr 1st 2023 at 05:36:56 PM by ( koola6) Posted under Finally, Piranha Plants, Super Mario Bros, Mario, YouTube, Check, the, date, Happy, April, Fools |
Never in my life did I expect this new craze on YouTube of these Mandela Effects. Gonna upload a video proving one of these, right I am. Give it your attention. You would really like it, as it shows you that there are indeed Piranha Plants in 1-1. Up and at 'em!
Have you watched it yet? if not, do not proceed.
Happy April Fools' Day! In reality, this video was a lot of fun to make. While I have your attention, let's talk about gaming videos, and some April Fools' Day jokes I've seen over the years.
Gaming started before the internet was popular, and because of that false information spread like wildfires. Sometimes that info wasn't even false to begin with, but like a gigantic game of telephone among video game fans, info spread. One piece of true info, such as "there is a hard mode after you beat the original Super Mario Bros. where the Goombas turn into Buzzy Beetles" could easily turn into "if you beat Super Mario Bros. 7 times in a row without turning the console off all enemies turn into Bowsers!!!".
The internet makes the spread of false info harder because the official sources can be easily found. The problem is, you have to know where the official source is. Oftentimes, I'll see some blatantly flase info being passed around like it was fact. Such examples include stuff like "If you use the name MHFGDUNRGDYSVGE1982734" in Among Us, you'll always be Impostor!".
Stuff like that, as a game programmer, has no reason to be in there unless you're specifically making some debug tools. Most of the time, you'd delete those in the final game, anyway.
When official channels come into the discussion on April Fools', it can be a lot of fun, if you know it's a joke. I myself have been the victim of thinking something real then realizing it was uploaded on April 1st.
The internet in its modern form is very toxic, but it should be viewed as a gift, not a curse.
I've been koola, and the real April Fools' day joke was the fact that there wasn't an April Fools' Day article, but instead a real one.
(It's not spelled "Bearenstien"???)
(This is going to be different than my usual articles, but stick with it. I think you'll enjoy it.)
This month, I've had trouble deciding what to write about. I haven't played many games this month other than The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Tetris, and Animal Crossing, and I have already talked about most of those in the past. (Tetris doesn't seem like an article I could realistically do.)
I was on the bus this morning, thinking about this, when a phrase popped into my head from some advertising that I had seen recently. "This is a stunning leap forward for video games as a medium!" if only I had a nickel for the amount of times I've heard that, verbatim...
I was thinking about that and realized just how much this phrase is thrown around on the regular these days. It seems like the people who say it aren't even sure what THEY are talking about.
If we analyze the phrase word by word, it would become obvious that this should only be said when there is something substantial and new. And as I was sitting there, thinking about it, I realized that seemingly all reviewers treat new technology as revolutionary. I mean, this is obvious, right? Of course they would. They're reviewers. They're paid to give good reviews.
Wait, what? They're paid to give good reviews? This seems so normal to us now that we don't even take a second to think about it. But, it is so backwards when you even give a second of thought to it. Reviewers are supposed to be honest, right? A review is supposed to give you an honesty opinion. But so often you hear, "I was given a copy of this game for free" or "thank you to [company] for giving me this gift box". At that point, can that even be called a review?
"A stunning leap forward for games as a medium"
This goes back to my point from before, but shouldn't this only be said when there's something substantial? When the PS5 was announced, you heard it. The PS5 didn't really change things all that much, honestly. It's got not a lot of exclusives to take advantage of its new power, and even the games "made for PS5" are downgraded for the PS4. I'm not saying the PS5 was bad, (it definitely isn't) but it didn't really add anything to to games as a medium.
When a new PC (or even, a new PC part) comes out, you also hear the phrase that I don't want to repeat over and over again so this article doesn't get dry and boring. PC gaming has stayed the same ever since Windows 10 was released, for the most part. You can make your PC faster by buying a new part, sure, but that doesn't change the landscape as a whole. PC gaming probably won't change from where it is now, realistically.
"A stunning leap forward for video games as a medium"
Leaps forward can only be seen in retrospect. We never know the full picture. When the Wii released, many people made fun of it for its controls, but now we loom over it fondly for its changes to the medium (mostly the addition of enjoyable, functioning motion controls and character avatars).
Don't try to jump the gun. See how new technology is released, and enjoy it in the times. Don't try to overpraise it or overtly bash it. After all, you have no idea if it will truly be a stunning leap forward for video games as a medium.
I've been koola, and I don't think the Xbox Series X was that exciting of a console. Fight me.
(Don't actually. I'm very weak...)
My birthday happened recently. I had a fun time with lots of friends. Most of my gifts happened to be Nintendo eShop cards.
With those eShop cards I was able to buy several games that I have wanted for years. One of those games was The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.
The Stanley Parable is an extremely well-made game. I won't dive into the specifics here, because this article could very easily get way out of hand if I did that (*cough cough* Persona 5 Royal article *cough cough*), but what mostly sold it for me was the various endings it had. There's a certain feel that meta games like The Stanley Parable have that really resonates with me. I wish that I could describe it to a greater degree, but honestly, I just don't know how.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a remake of The Stanley Parable (yes, a remake, I'll get into that later) for modern consoles. They could have just left it at that; instead, they chose to elaborate more on the fact that it is a port.
SPOILER WARNING!
One of the decisions that had me scratching my head is the fact that this game opens asking whether you've played The Stanley Parable before; if yes, you have to play 2-3 endings (depending on which endings you actually chose). Later, I realized that there is a definite purpose to this: it eases you back into the game. Especially if you haven't played a game in 5+ years, jumping into the New Content can sometimes be really jarring.
When you do unlock the New Content door, the narrator is really happy, and excited to see what the New Content is. The Jump Circle turns about to be a complete waste (in the narrator's opinion) and he laments about expecting the new content to be any better than it is. This is obviously analogous to our new remaster strategy. Everything speaks for itself here.
After resetting the game, you'll find the New New Content door, showcasing the various aspects of "The Stanley Parable 2".
Upon the completion of the expo hall, you can restart the game and actually find The Stanley Parable 2. The addition of the bucket and its extra dialogue adds for some new flavor(?) on top of the already existing endings, sometimes allowing for new endings (my personal favorite being the "Is This A Bucket?" ending). I feel like this is a good way to go about adding new endings to the format that The Stanley Parable instilled.
Lastly, this is a top-tier remake. Remaking a game isn't easy: you need to reawaken the feelings that the original brings. People are often disappointed in remakes for not meeting what they consider to be a reasonable expectation; this expectation is the game matching the feelings that the original gave them, not the gameplay. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe passes this goal with flying colors.
I've been koola, and bucket murder is a crime.
(Stanley wondered why the bucket was being described in the third person, despite his apparent ability to understand the bucket himself.)
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