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crustaceousfaggot · 1 year

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Why you should give Text Adventure games a try (and how to do so)

There is not nearly enough love for Text Adventure Games here on Tumblr. Or anywhere really. But especially here, I feel like you guys would really get a kick out of them. Here's why:

(quick note, I'm gonna be using the words Text Adventure and Interactive Fiction pretty interchangeably here. Technically that's not perfectly accurate, they are technically different things, but I don't care to explain the difference Just roll with it.)

Do you like weird short stories told through unconventional mediums? That's most of what Interactive Fiction is

You like story based video games but hate the finicky combat? Congrats, there is literally no combat skill required beyond the ability to type "hit guard with crowbar"

Blind or visually impaired? Since these games are (with a few exceptions) entirely text based, they work great with a screen reader!

Sick of profit motivated AAA titles with no creative integrity? Well, these games are almost always produced by a single nerd (usually a horrid amalgamation of computer geek and literature geek) with no budget and no responsibilities of the product they're making. And they're usually not paid, since these games are free. Text Adventure is a labour of love, and in most games you can feel the care and effort the creator has put into the game.

Sick of spending $20-70 on a video game? Lucky you, I've been playing TA for years and I have not spent a cent in doing so (Fallen Londen will try to make you pay. But Fallen Londen sucks and is run by bigots. Fuck Fallen London.) Games are either available free on a browser, or as free, small downloadable files (most of which can be played using the Parchment Interpreter)

Wish you read more, but reliant on the quick dopamine of digital media? Well now you can read while also being an active participant in the narrative.

Bad at puzzles? Me too! Games from the 80s and 90s, as well as more famous newer games, have walkthroughs and hints easily available online. Newer games tend to either have a "hint" command, or come with a walkthrough file.

Do you like weird surrealist horror? Well there's... A lot of it.

Okay, but where do I start?

So there are two types of text adventure. The one you might be more accustomed to, and which sees more modern use, is called Hypertext Interactive Fiction. The other is called Parser Interactive Fiction, it's generally seen in older games, as well as games that are larger, feature more puzzles, or involve more exploration.

Hypertext games

Basically, the game will give you a scenario, and then a list of options (hypertext links) to click on to decide what to do next. These are usually more beginner friendly since you don't need to fiddle around with parsers, but personally I find them a bit limiting. Nonetheless, if you're new to Text Adventure, they're a good place to start.

Some of my favourites hypertext games (summaries in green)

My Father's Long, Long Legs is an interactive horror story about family, unease, and loss. Really more of a story than a game, but still good. Very nice use of sound. It does have some visual aspects, so this one might not work with screen readers

Scene Kid Simulator is pretty much what it says on the tin. A cute, nostalgic, coming-of-age slice of life story from the POV of a 2000s scene preteen. Nothing special, but a fun time.

The Uncle Who Works at Nintendo is a strange, unconventional, witty, and heartfelt horror game. Your friend has an uncle who he says works for Nintendo. You're about to meet him, or so he says. A fun and spooky look at childhood, childhood friendships, and childhood lies.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonald's is... A joy to play. The name says it all honestly. Witty, charming, tense, engaging, and emotional when it wants to be. I actually found this one through a lucky Tumblr Blaze, which makes sense since this is perfectly suited to Tumblr sensibilities. This one has more puzzle aspects than most hypertext games, but it's still relatively easy and beginner friendly. You're a vampire hunter. It's your night off, and you go to McDonald's. But there's something wrong with the customer sitting beside you...

Toadstools is a game about hunting mushrooms. You have trespassed in a national park and you are wandering blindly through the woods looking for rare fungi. Good luck :)

Parser games

Okay these fuckers are where I really get excited. These games have the classic flashing cursor line where you input text like "go north", "search bookshelf", or "kiss my husband", and the game's rudimentary AI parses your input to decide what happens next. These are my favourites. They really allow you the feeling of exploring the game world, immerse you in the protagonist and the story, using just text on a screen and simple inputs. This does make them considerably more difficult, since a) you need to decide the right way to phrase what you want to do, otherwise it won't work, and b) more possibilities means more chances to mess up and miss things. Unlike video games, your cursor won't light up when you see something important, you'll have to search stuff and work things out on your own But, in my opinion, it is so, so worth it. Summaries in red

The first text adventure game I ever played was One Eye Open. It's an extremely graphic and gory medical horror game (although I would consider it tasteful medical horror, in that it never derives horror from medical procedures, disability, or ooOoHh gross scary sick people) You play as a volunteer test subject for a medical research facility, having to unravel the mystery of the hospital's bloody past. It's good. It's fun. It's tense. It has some really dumb mechanics. Don't play if you're sensitive to descriptions of gore, death, or corpses. This one doesn't have a walkthrough, but I've played it enough times to know the puzzles by heart, DM me if you need help.

Anchorhead is possibly my favourite piece of interactive fiction I've ever played. It's incredible. You play as a newlywed woman, moving to the small seaside town of Anchorhead after your husband Michael inherited a mansion from some distant relatives. There's something wrong with the town though. There's definitely something wrong with your husband's mysterious ancestors. And you're starting to think that there might be something strange happening to Michael. Get ready for some wonderfully atmospheric and immersive Lovecraftian horror, action sequences that are incredibly vibrant for Text Adventure, and a super compelling mystery that the game lets you work out on your own. The puzzles here are hard. I'm not gonna lie, I used a walkthrough at several points during this game. But my god it's worth it. Big massive huge content warning here for mentions of incest, sexual assault, and pedophilia. Not in excess, and nothing explicit, but it will be mentioned as part of the story.

Little Blue Men is a short, strange, sci-fi-ish horror-ish comedy-ish game by the same author as Anchorhead, though the two games are wildly different. You are an office worker. Cope with it. Take The Stanley Parable, Stella Firma, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mash 'em together, and you have Little Blue Men. It's bizarre. It's evocative. It's pretty darn good.

Coloratura is a strangely beautiful sci-fi story. You're a weird little alien blob. You've been separated from your home and are trapped aboard a human spaceship. You need to get home, need to make the humans understand in the only ways you can: color and song.

Slouching Towards Bedlam is a brilliant little steampunk game about language, choice, cults, Armageddon, and triangles. This game has multiple endings. It's neat in that none of the endings are really "good" or "bad". Rather, you need to decide where you stand, and act in the way you think is best.

The Lurking Horror is the grandparent of horror interactive fiction, released in the late 80s. You're a tech student in university. Something more than electricity is powering the school's computers. Find it, but don't die along the way. Besides the comically archaic descriptions of computers, this game doesn't feel all that dated. It's tricky, puzzle-heavy, and charmingly surreal. (Fun fact, this game and another old TA game called Zork inspired the "darkness kills you" mechanic which would later be popularized in Don't Starve!)

Nine Lives is a very short, very weird, very cartoony game where you play a cat that is very bad at staying alive. Cw for non-graphic but repeated cat death.

Spider and Web is one of the most ingenious uses of Text Adventure as a medium I've ever seen. It's famous for having one of, if not the singular best puzzles in video game history. It's tense, it's fast-paced, it introduces you to mechanics slowly and then lets you test them out on your own. I won't spoil too much, but you play as a very badass spy, reliving your brilliant heist during an interrogation. This game even features a character destined to be a Tumblr Sexyman. It really has it all.

If anyone actually read through all this, and has even considered playing any of these games, I'll be a little surprised. This post turned out a lot longer than I wanted it to be. It was meant to just be "hey interactive fiction is a cool and underappreciated medium, go check it out", but this is my special interest, and not one I often get to talk about. I guess this was me infodumping to the only place that will listen, the empty void of the internet. But these games are fun. And they do not get enough love. Text games are a dying genre, if they're not dead already. Give them a chance, show them some love.

#video games #games #text adventures #interactive fiction #horror #horror games #lovecraftian horror #anchorhead #if #decided not to mention Cragne Manor #because that's a beast all it's own #and it isn't really worth reccomending unless you're already an Anchorhead fan and seasoned IF player #swarm's nonsense #gaming

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katyspersonal · 8 months

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What's your interpretation that the left hand of cleric beast is much bigger that the right?🤔

Well, like I've pointed out before, the only explanation I am seeing is blood ministration being done on the left arm!

However, this might get a little more interesting with the Cleric Beasts, because Emilia is also one, yet her arms are symmetrical!

My closest guess to why it happened is because of something Healing Church has been known to do with female bodies. Namely - do some sort of surgery/manipulation/operation on them in order to change their blood type into 'holy blood' one, which they are able to share with the hunters!

English localization team had to use term "groomed" instead of whatever this actually says, and this is definitely going into top 10 of my biggest headaches with mistranslations! As you can see from the Japanese script retranslation ( x ), the meaning is more literal, implying a procedure. I always felt like it would be a surgery on bone marrow, since this is where blood cells are produced, and doctors in Bloodborne could have learned to alter them into having impossible type of blood!

So, as a female cleric, Amelia might have had her first communion with the holy blood as a Blood Saint, instead of generic blood ministration treatment like apparently everyone else has!

I am still not sure why female staff specifically was the Blood Saints, since apparently blood vials are not menstrual blood, as we can learn thanks to Adeline:

Maybe it could have something to do with menstrual cycle, though, because of the whole cycle of moon vs menstrual cycle thing, and Laurence being affiliated with Moon Presence, and then Micolash also stealing his swag and basing his own institution on:

I'd say this is either some sort of deeply rooted superstition within the setting, or in fact, yes, the holy blood links to the Great Ones who put HELLA importance on blood and birth, so being biologically female is crucial for that link to take intended effects.

Ludwig is an interesting case, though! He was SUPPOSED to have blood ministration too, like Laurence or Cleric Beast of the Bridge! Why would not the first Healing Church hunter and the HEAD of their hunters do something so crucial? Especially since Cleric Beast of the Bridge drops the Sword Badge with which you buy Hunter Chief Emblem, implying that this beast is currently what Ludwig used to be? But his left arm is not bigger. In fact, it is even smaller. So I am trying to think of the variants of what had happened here:

1) Ludwig somehow merged with an actual horse, so his anatomy is simply no longer judged through the same lense

2) Ludwig is a leftie, and this is where he holds his Holy Moonlight Sword, so its effect would be a "remedy" for possible arm deformations

3) Ludwig is not a simple beast, but the one with a lot of Kin features, so his anatomy is simply no longer judged through the same lense (+horses are primarily herbivores, and Kin is associated with the flora in the setting, so maybe that's why he went horsegirl mode instead of getting something weak like antlers lol)

4) Ludwig is trans and actually was the first to get Blood Saint treatment rather than regular blood ministration (+we take Adeline's blood from her right arm, and notice that his right arm is a little bigger)

5) Ludwig is a cis man and was the first biological male who attempted to receive Blood Saint treatment instead of regular blood ministration, but that didn't take the intended effect because the gods Be Like That in the setting + his unusual visions and mutation might be the side effect of that and that's why Healing Church stopped doing that with male organisms. Basically, if a male attempts becoming a living factory for the holy blood, it will go "wrong".

6) Combinations of the above points

.....Okay, that went a little unfocused from the initial topic, but you see my points here! Thank you for the ask!

_________________

Bonus ideas:

- Whereas Ludwig is holding the Holy Moonlight Sword in his left hand, Amelia also is grasping the Gold Pendant in her left hand. So maybe nothing was special about her, but holding a special item in the "effected" hand will remedy the asymmetry effect, and had Amelia not been doing that all the time, she'd be asymmetrical too?

- Amelia using recolored model for Bell-Ringing Woman for her appearance might be not accidental, but a fuel for the headcanon that she has Pthumerian blood too, and Pthumerians might simply evolve differently, or traditionally have different way they' go for the blood communition. Off the top of my head, look at Loran Clerics having same sized arms:

Basically, I can answer why Cleric Beasts and the huntsmen have asymmetrical arms, but not why people like Emilia and Ludwig broke the trend despite being the first in line to have blood ministration normally... Because I just have too many ideas, and my preference usually falls towards the most logical ones, but when there are equally logical ideas I become helpless :')

#bloodborne #cleric beast #vicar amelia #ludwig the accursed #bloodborne theory #bloodborne headcanons #use later #ask replies #i actually like the idea that part of ludwig's suffering is just great ones going 'bitch I said I wanted someone with MENSES for this one'#laurence would also not be above using someone as a lab rat but to his honor he clearly used HIMSELF as a lab rat as well dfsjhfdh #but Ludwig being actually the first Blood Saint is interesting!#he could share blood vials with his own knights right on the battlefield #i am just.. Basically Laurence and Micolash (ESPECIALLY Micolash) deeply resenting not being female works sooo well #I had that whole ass post about how creepy Micolash grew about themes of menstruation and birth and female organism in general #and like it scared myself so much that I legit had bone-chilling fear after reading my own shit that night fdshfhds #meanwhile trans Micolash would 10000% lack genital dysphoria and only want things like his former voice or breasts gone #the deeper you dig into bb lore the more you realize men of this setting tend to be really weird towards womanhood and all attached to it #it is just something I dislike to address because toxic fans tend to use it to bully Gehrman fans and tell cis men that BB is 'not for them #but it IS there too so #WHY I AM TAKING NORMAL ASS ASKS TOO FAR #no but when will it end? lol

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