Something I've been thinking about is how games, in particular TCGs, will have mechanics' diegetic meaning be more vague/ambiguous whenever they depict details at the periphery of the story, away from the focus of action.
Magic: The Gathering is a little problematic in this regard, because the big thing its games are "about" are spells and magical effects, but because the world that they affect has so little definition in comparison, the spells have little explanatory grounding as a result.
Even non-simulation videogames like orthodox JRPGs, tend to give more detail to very carefully selected mechanics: equipment, for instance, gets a lot more detail than money, the inventory, or physical health (outside of HP and status effects).
Netrunner is a good example: the mechanics relating to what the runner does in prep for runs, such as location cards, card draw events, etc., are a lot less definite than cards that are the focus of attention during runs (ICE, icebreakers, agendas, etc.). Backstory versus story.
I saw this comic in Pixiv of "the yuri shikigami" (https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/120200213), and immediately decided I had to make the yuri paper dolls for myself
Thinking about how there's one Unicode character that has no textual representation but _does_ have a sound representation (ASCII code 7 "BEL").
So what I'm saying is, there's existing precedent to justify adding the explosion sounds from Ace Attorney and other VNs,
Lumisa Kosugi sighing as she exits the Corridor of Blood, slowly rotates her equipped item slot until it reaches a garden hose, screws it into a nearby faucet, and then walks back in
Undertale (2015) is a game about using a jetpack while a 1960s-style robot throws cake ingredients at you
And people say there's no poetry in engineering
Tag yourself
https://fairysvoice.net/microblog/ – I've added a tag cloud to my self-hosted microblog, whose contents are mirrored on 3 social networks. I'm also in the process of adding tags to my *types into calc* 13-year Twitter backlog. ETA is some time after you forget about following up on this
*presses palms together and mutters "thank god the only character in Taisen Puzzle-Dama that's actually playable is also the one with the funkiest story mode ending music"*
Stroking chin emoji
Who would win in a fight: a thousand Mozarts, or a thousand Einsteins? Before you ask, they may only fight in parts of Europe that both visited in life, and neither side is permitted to use weapons developed after their respective deaths.
Glider PRO (1994)
Wikipedia openings that get you rubbing your hands
I kind of miss the simplicity of early Python's "batteries included" standard library, offering everything from gzip support to argv parsing… but still, with no easy upgrade path, it couldn't last… interesting to think that Perl's CPAN model (package managers) won the day…
I think there's only only other platform that has a "batteries included" approach to features… and it's the web browser DOM, which has to have basically every non-trivial application feature built in, AND every previous version of that feature, for perpetuity.
People say there's too many substitution ciphers in puzzlers like Fez or Void Stranger or Tunic nowadays. Not me. The tedium of looking up a chart to read one letter is the player's way of expressing their utterly stubborn commitment to the game. Like level-grinding, or 1CCs.
Trying to think of other small platformers with the same mysterious tone as Gimmick / Trip World that aren't Kirby's Dream Land 1… This may be shocking considering how much text it has, but my top candidate might actually be Kero Blaster.
I feel like all the sequels - 2, 3, and World - succeed at feeling like "a big adventure", but 3 and World both do so on a macro level, with the map screen and short one-note levels, whereas 2 is more "episodic", where each level is an adventure in miniature.
I feel like Super Mario Bros. 2 is the one game whose legacy was actually harmed by having Mario in it… it can only ever be compared unfavourable to both 1 and 3, even though its levels have completely different pacing and design goals.
Everyone talks about SMB3, but to me Doki Doki Panic is where Nintendo starts to break out the memorable platformer level designs… riding on a bird through 6-2, climbing up through a hollow tree in 5-3… even the little shortcuts in 1-1 and 3-1…
Land cards (and their antecedents in other "dudebasher" TCGs like Legends Of Runeterra) are interesting to think about in Netrunner terms because they are simultaneously credits, clicks, AND basic actions – bearing the weight of basically the whole game's structure.
Thinking about the Magic: The Gathering "golden trifecta" of game ideas that were vital to its success:
• The concept of a "trading card game" in general
• 5 colours, to force specific builds
• Land cards, that make games volatile (arguably useful when the card pool was small)
To me, the "golden trifecta" of Netrunner, as Richard Garfield designed it, would be:
• The asymmetry
• The basic actions (that you can always use without needing a card)
• Clicks (as a second, constant resource that loosely constrains how many actions a turn can contain)
I made one fansite in my life, for 868-HACK (https://868-hack.neocities.org/) but then, that was a game I was lightly involved in developing… if you know of any other fansites similar to this, do tell…
Revising my website's links page again (https://fairysvoice.net/links/) and it made me realise I don't have enough game fansites in my life… I've let so many of them slip away from me… Everyone recommend me fansites… preferably for the obscure games that need them…
Going to start perpetuating misinformation that the Netrunner cards are called "ICE" in reference to the definitive cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash
*thinking* If cascading SpaceX satellite debris ended up landing in Gensokyo, it would, narratively speaking, absolutely have to hit the Hakurei shrine. There's no other possible location.
Some of you may wonder how difficult it is to port an aging late-00s Javascript codebase to the new, minty-fresh 2020's class syntax. Fortunately, it's pleasantly simple.
Sigh… if only Makeship would make it possible for me to finally own a plush of *my* favourite indie game character… Reimu from Touhou Project
*actually opens Desert Golfing dot ee ecks ee and is presented with this* Uh,
I'm forcing myself off quick-play high-adrenaline games. Balatro, out. MAME, out. Actual roguelikes, out. In their place, to fill the void, to restore equilibrium to my psyche: the pure, the old reliable, the rock-steady, Desert Golfing.
Reading Wikipedia
Is this good
My review of Jokerless is that it feels a lot more "roguelike" than the other modes… builds have to be locked in from the start; the "power items" are the wax seals and certain vouchers (Telescope etc.); starting levels are very swingy; resources (cash) beget more resources.
You ever think about how Wordle got famous just in the nick of time before the window when your game could go viral from Twitter integration was slammed shut
My army at the final battle
Well, I just beat Jokerless…
Don't overthink platformer animations for simple games. You can sell a perfectly good jump using only two animation frames total.