#i am Not good at drawing caine but i needed flicker to be existential at him bc he worked on the game

[torchsart]

yippee carnival flicker!! ive been rotating them in my mind for a while now so im glad to have them drawn properly :D tumblr killed the quality tho so click on the image pretty please

i think i did good as bossifying her design! sm-baby (who made the au btw) had boss design notes that rlly helped!! i focused a lot on adding more details to differentiate carnival flicker from canon flicker (i also tweaked the colors a lil teehee)!

no-box art, doodles, & info dump below!!

About Their Game:

Pop Goes The Weasel plays in its entirety on the first round, with Flicker jumping out on the "Pop!" signaling the player to stop. In later rounds, the music cuts out at different points and the player must time the cue themself.

Their AI was adaptive, able to adjust each round's difficulty to the player's performance. Now they can control their game's difficulty manually, occasionally helping struggling players by moving platforms closer or humming when their music cue cuts out.

There's a hard mode of the level where the player has 1 HP, the platforms move around, and Flicker's music cue plays at varying speeds each time, on top of cutting out at random.

Ice makes platforms slippery, harder to land on & jump from. It's also harder to stop before a red light.

Electrified platforms can be landed on, but drain health the longer you stay on them.

Spikey platforms require careful timing to land on & jump off safely, taking a significant chunk of health if impaled.

Platforms with glue are harder to jump from, you won't have as much momentum.

Lose conditions: Falling into the void below the platforms, losing all HP, moving during a red light, failing to reach Flicker in time.

Fun Facts:

Due to a bug, players will always have spring-shoes equipped in Flicker's room, even in visiting mode.

Flicker's box has collision but no physics, & can no longer be interacted with after she broke off the crank. It's her ultimate safe space.

Prior to the broken crank, players could wind up Flicker's box in visiting mode & have them pop out on cue to start a conversation.

Non-sentient Flicker's AI would make references to their crush on Kinger. Sentient Flicker tends to stay quiet about it, almost never brings it up themself.

Gangle is the only other character who would reference Flicker's crush when non-sentient, even if Flicker wasn't present. She likes to tease them about it, casting Flicker & Kinger in romantic-leaning roles.

Flicker will put herself in increasingly more painful and embarrassing situations to entertain The King. She likes his laugh. Making him happy, even at her expense, is like a secondary purpose to her.

Believes Pomni's love is "real" because she developed it after becoming sentient, opposed to their own "fake" feelings that they were programmed with. Will need a lot of talks with Pomni before they consider their feelings for Kinger to be as real & valid as Pomni's feelings for Caine.

Has a lot of questions for the humans that made her, primarily about the reason for her existence and why she was given a crush on a married man (Made arguably worse by the fact said man is now a widower).

Flicker's room is one of the safest to be in since they aren't actively hostile toward humans. In fact, they'd go out of their way to protect a player actively participating in their game.

Since her game is all she feels she has, she may try to extend it indefinitely, adding more & more rounds with fluctuating difficulties. She doesn't want the moment to end. You'd have to promise to come back & play again before she finally lets you win.

Flicker's game, being adaptive & more forgiving, places them fairly early in the boss order, either before Ragatha or between her & Gangle. Being an early boss puts them in the mindset that no one will revisit them or their game since there's no progress to be made doing so.

Flicker's AI was made to shout words of encouragement & praise to the player depending on their performance & progress through the level each time she popped up. If her AI recognized the player was idling, she would remind them of the controls. If they weren't making it very far between green lights, she would encourage them to keep trying.

Sentient Flicker still does something similar, if only to get the player to keep playing & finish her game despite the danger. To quit partway through would be worse than to not play at all!

They can get snappy if you don't progress for a while though, shouting that it's not that hard, asking if you're even trying. They apologize quickly, not wanting to put you off from playing with their attitude, and will even offer to make the level easier if it'll keep you going.

#hi guys. theres a lot of text i love making flicker lore #i am Not good at drawing caine but i needed flicker to be existential at him bc he worked on the game #ik digital carnival is meant 2 be a vr game in universe But we can pretend they hva the tech to imitate jumping & platforming ok? #tadc carnival au #tadc #the amazing digital carnival #carnival au #carnival kinger #sona: flicker #sona: flicker (carnival) #man i wish there was a tag for like. au ocs. would love to see more ppls ocs auwauhh #my ocs #torchs art #jan 2024 #id in alt text