Well gang, looks like I’ve seen yet another thing I shouldn’t have in my tireless pursuit to bring y’all an exciting Werewolf Wednesday Who am I kidding, I don’t even need an excuse to get up to trouble Hmm I hope my research wasn’t monitored. Well no use worrying now!
So about that strange door I found in the tunnels last time, I decided to try and figure out what building it was below- assuming that the two would be connected. I went back to the archives at HQ to see if Sammy could help me track down any docs I missed.
Took me a while but I measured my pace in the tunnels and lined my route up with a map of the City above, from what I could tell that door is somewhere beneath a big building downtown, crawling with security and little trace of its purpose other than “probably bureaucratic”.
Even the folks that work in the area seemed to have little idea what that place is, all I could find was one sign by a shipping entrance that read “Stronghand HQ Tower” something about that name stuck out as familiar but I can’t quite place it…
Checking the database for more information led to a few heavily redacted preview images with heavy security clearances and a link to “request clearance and schedule an archive visit” which confuses me because I thought I was working at like… THE archive for most things here.
I was tempted to bring Sammy on but I’d rather keep him out of this fishy business. Decided to just have him help me find a lock specialist in that area for that key I found so I have more of an alibi to be snooping around downtown.
“There is a hole at the center of everything, and it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming, and you are not escaping, and the universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it, not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole… You are atoms, and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence.”
For a cheap-as-hell WolfRPG (that’s basically another RPG Maker) game, One Way Heroics is quite addictive (I suck at it, but I really love the overall aesthetic and gameplay and music and I can’t put it down and I did NOT expect that~
Also I’m legit thinking about starting writing reviews or just highlighting some lesser-known games, plus older games and their remasters that are on the cheaper side of the price spectrum or have a good sale right now (mostly Japanese, because I tend to gravitate towards their game design much more). Plus games from not-indie franchises, but lesser-known nonetheless. Basically a mix between, like, SNESDrunk, Sega Lord X, HG101 (that I really can’t stand anymore after that Twitter incident, so I will do my best to just give honest looks without diving into anything… unpleasant and biased) and info video makers like ClemmyGames. What do you think? Should I try doing that?
For a cheap-as-hell WolfRPG (that’s basically another RPG Maker) game, One Way Heroics is quite addictive (I suck at it, but I really love the overall aesthetic and gameplay and music and I can’t put it down and I did NOT expect that~
TheKickstarterforVanillaBeast: Ace in the Hole has started!
VanillaBeast: Ace in the Hole is action-adventure game with an open world environment and a massive variety in gameplay.
Each level of the game works as a minigame, inspired by various classic titles like The Punisher,Outrun,Double Dragon, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! but also referencing movies, music and general pop culture from the 80’s and the 90’s.
Check the Kickstarterpage to learn more about the game itself, the people working on it and all the impressive rewards Vanilla Gaming Company has prepared for its backers! Every bit of help is greatly appreciated!
A small preview of the pixel artbackground,spriteandanimationwork I have been doing for the Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! parody/homage level for Vanilla Gaming Company’s game Vanilla Beast: Ace in the Hole.
The game will have a huge amount of minigames/levels, each of them in the hands of a different artist, inspired by various classic games likeThe Punisher,Outrun, and Double Dragon, but also referencing movies,musicand general pop culture from the 80’s.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is a game I used to play a lot as a kid, and that I still love and enjoy today, so getting to work on reimagining it has been a wonderful job!
Full pic from my previous post. A small doodle I made a long time ago, Elziein modern clothing, inspired by her description from a small fanficthat someone wrote and shared with me around the time I started working on the game.
Since I have been asked about the lorebehindVampire’s Bit a couple of times recently I decided to organize my ideas a little and post them here.
When I started working on Vampire’s Bit my main goal was to recreate the feeling of earlyARCADE/NES games, since keeping it as simple as possible both in gameplayandgraphics was a main priority, considering it was my first time taking part on a game jam, and my first time working under a very tight deadline too.
This minimalistic approach would also reference heavily some of those old games that I used to play a lot in the past and that were a big inspiration for this project, like Bomberman,Pac-man,Berzekand Lode Runner.
Since most games from that era couldn’t rely on a story heavily due to technical limitations I decided to keep Vampire’s Bit a little bit vagueandmysterioustoo, as I’d love to see other people filling the blanks with their imagination, and coming up with different stories and interpretations based on it, in the same way most people would come up with their own ideas,stories, and even their own character designs based only the small amount of information those old games could provide them. As time went on and I kept working on the game I deviated a lot from that initial view and style, and while that’s something I have been struggling with recently, I’ll address it with more detail in another post later on.
So, for the loreaspect itself, let’s list all the details I have set on stone:
The main character of the story is a vampire called Elizabeth, a name both her family and her friends usually shorten to Elzieafectionally, and that I also use often when talking about her. As you can imagine her name is an obvious reference to Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, who has become popularly associated with vampires, and also as a reference to one of the stories from the book “Vampires Are” by author and vampirologist Stephen Kaplan. In that story Kaplan is approached by a woman named Elizabethwho claims to be a real vampire, and not only manages to evade all his trick questions, but also introduces him to a very interesting and detailed account on how a vampiresurvives in our current times. As for Elzie’s appareance she was inspired by romanian strigoi mythology, which noted people with red hairandblue eyes as someone suspicious of beingorbecomingavampire.
The events in Vampire’s Bit take place during the Victorianera (1830~1900) and Elziehas been a vampirefor some time already. She’s quite experienced with her vampire powers, and the only thing drawing her back is that as she was quite youngwhen turned into a vampire, she is very shortandthinphysically, and also not very strong. This part of her characterization also takes heavy inspiration from other famous vampires from popular literature like Claudiafrom “Interview with the Vampire” byAnne Rice, and Elifrom “Let the Right One In”, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Before becoming a vampire, she probably was the spoiled daughter of a rich family, something we can see small hints of not only in her bratty attitudebut also on her taste for fancy looking placesandfancy lookingdresses.
And this lead us to analyze her personalitywith more detail. If I had to choose a word to describe Elzie I’d say mischeviousis a good one. At first glance shewill be antagonisticwithout any doubt, as I thought that a game where you play as “the villian” was a very interesting twist on what we usually get from vampire themedgames. Growing up as a rich and spoiled girl, she is quite used to things always going the way she wants them to go, and using her unnatural powers gives her an extra advantage to do whatever it takes her to ensure that’s exactly what happens. But deep inside she is not really evil, and a big amount the questionable things she does, she does out of necessity, such as killing people, because she needs to feed herself, or out from boredom and lonelyness, leading her tosometimeskeep people as pets or slaves, or doing riskyanddangerousthingsjust get a thrill, like dancing outside at the brink of sunrise. In the same way Pendleton Ward’s “Adventure Time”explainedMarceline, their own vampirecharacter,Elzieis not actually evil, but very very old and has “lost track of her moral code”.
At some point in the future we will have a couple of chances to see Elzie interact with other characters, like Layna, the main character from @lightspiritdev’s “Project Light Spirit”, which will give us a better insight on her personality, and how she relates and interacts with others. But that’s also something for a different post too.
So, this is pretty much al the lore I always had in mind for Vampire’s Bit, and more specifically for Elizabethas a character.
With this as a starting point let your imagination fly and feel free to come up with anything you want, and of course, please share it with me too, as I love to see different interpretations of her and the game.
In the category of game that I’ve played entirely with a friend (or more like, I watched him played via a stream, but it was super cool !) Here’s Félix the Reaper ! It’s a little indie game released in 2019. It’s a about a really groovy grim reaper that, as you might expect, take his job with a lot of music. It’s a actually more a puzzle game, you’ll use your brains on that one, but the character design and the OST is really nice !
It’s slightly macabre, and it’s not that long of a game, but really, it deserve to join to the dance !
You can now change your pronouns at any time from the Journal! Click on the [+] button to bring up the pronoun menu. You must select a preset or confirm custom pronouns to close the menu. Your pronoun selection will be updated immediately in the Journal, but you will need to navigate to the next passage for them to take effect in the game text itself.
PRONOUNS BUG FIX
If you are using the xe/xemorze/zir pronoun presets, you may have an encountered a bug where your reflexive pronoun prints as “emself” rather than “xyrself” or “zirself”, respectively. To fix this, you must either start the game over from the beginning OR use the pronoun selection in the Journal and re-select your pronouns.
The pronoun bug did not effect the he/him, she/her, or they/them presets, nor pronouns set with the custom pronoun form.
When your mercenary work backs you into a corner, you take the only option available and accept a contract: to travel to the city of Velantis and steal an ancient artifact said to be blessed by the gods. Simple, right?
But Velantis holds more than you bargained for. Gathering a ragtag party of malcontents and renegades from across the city, you must navigate enemy factions, meddling guilds, and escalating political tensions. Your choices will ultimately determine the city’s fate – and the fate of every person who lives there.
Wayfarer is a dark fantasy interactive fiction game. You play as a Wayfarer, a member of an order of warriors born with magical immunity in a world dominated by magic. It is currently in development. The full game will include three acts and a total of 14 chapters.
Out For Delivery is a 42 minute playable documentary shot with a 360-degree camera. The slice-of-life experience follows a food delivery courier in Beijing on January 23, 2020, the day before Lunar New Year, and the day Wuhan shut down due to COVID-19.
This game was so weird, I just had to get into the act with the art a little bit. Check out The Lickening, by Only Slightly games! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ1w7i4wDNw
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