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infinitebrians · 4 months

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Favorite Games of 2023 Part 4: Pseudoregalia

I knew Pseudoregalia was going to be good the minute I started the game and did the input for the Mario 64 side flip jump and the game’s main character Sybil did her own version of that satisfying jump. One of my all time favorite things to do in a Mario game (or any game) is that side flip, a jump that is as practical as it is just simply satisfying to do. Sybil being able to do that jump without needing any of the power ups found in the game told me that the developers of this game knew the importance to making character feel good jumping around in a 3D world. Her movement only gets better from there with a bunch of new platforming abilities that makes her capable of getting what feels like anywhere in that game world if desired. The pure control you have over Sybil's platforming capabilities gave me so many great moments of pure curiosity to experiment with what could work. What's better is watching friends and others play the game and figure out their own solutions to the game's open ended platforming design. There are no wrong answers in the world of Pseudoregalia, just results.

This game was a complete surprise in just about every way, just the best feeling platformer I’ve played in a long while in this small, cleaned up former game jam game. I’ve followed the main dev rittzler on twitter for a few years because the gameplay clips of their work have all looked fun and impressive and they always shared other really cool indie dev work as well. So, I was excited to finally play Pseudoregalia when it was announced to be released. It's super low price (6 dollars USD) and being something I was able to finish in the span of one day alone was a huge breath of fresh air in this current gaming environment. It’s something I’ve been personally thinking a lot about recently is the appeal of a simpler, lower priced game. It’s appeal to me coming from playing something that never needs to be some sort of omnipresent, super game. Instead, Pseudoregalia presents itself in a humble statement of, ‘here, enjoy a few hours jumping around this wacky maze like castle as a goat bunny lady!’.

I'm not a person who typically ever has a desire to replay a game right after finishing it, I usually prefer to immediately move on to another game that I've been wishing to play for for a while. Pseudoregalia is a game I've played four or so times now from start to finish, I even started another playthrough in preparation for this drawing/writing and found myself wanting to play it all the way through again. Its the first time I found myself actually physically seeing the appeal of speedrunning, a hobby I always just enjoyed as a spectator. Pseudoregalia just lends itself so neatly to that part of me that loves routing out a path for stuff. How quickly can you find all the vital movement abilities for Sybil? What's unnecessary, what can be improved, what can be gathered while on the path of gathering something else. From at least my perspective of not actually investigating the proper speedrunner's routing, the options feel immense. From these handful of times replaying the game I've gotten a good handle of finding my way around the map and a good idea of how to get a lot of the really important movement abilities almost immediately. It also made the game feel quite different from how it felt to me with my first playthrough, what was once mysterious and labyrinthine was now a familiar playground.

That is one thing I will miss when doing those repeat playthroughs is that sense of discovery that occurred with that initial run. Soon before Pseudoregalia came out, I watched a lot of Videochess and spaghoner's exploration and documentation of the incredible Mario 64 hack, B3313 ( https://youtu.be/pLKB0SG0i8c ). I found that hack incredible at creating a sense of uneasiness and wonder from simply keeping you constantly guessing what was next behind each door something even those two expressed while streaming. During my first playthrough of Pseudoregalia, I was completely lost in that castle and was constantly finding paths that led to new zones or ones circled me back to old ones from hours ago. It was a pretty incredible feeling of discovery that only wore out it's welcome at the end when I just needed one more big key necessary for progression. What helped make exploration in both of these games engaging the whole time is that aspect of having a really fun character to move around as while being lost. It was okay with being completely lost because I could still just keep doing these long jumps into wall kicks that just make Sybil go fuckin' fast in an immensely satisfying way.

I think in the time it's taken me to think about this game again, and briefly revisit it in preparation for this art/writing I've come to decide that this is probably my favorite new game of 2023. In a year full of fantastic platformers to pick from, this one was just a class above in terms of movement design and movement application.

#drawdogs #art #pixel art #favorite games of 2023 #writing #pseudoregalia #sybil pseudoregalia

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gaygamer · 4 months

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World of Horror was another of my favorite games of last year. A wonderful, creepy mix of the roguelike, RPG, and visual novel genres, IMHO.

For more on why I liked World of Horror so much, read the blog post I wrote about my favorite games of 2023.

#world of horror #nintendo switch #games #favorite games #favorite games of 2023 #goty #goty 2023 #horror games #roguelikes #rpgs

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daeyumi · 6 months

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Exploring the depths 🌌🪻

#zelda #tears of the kingdom #TotK #zelda totk #zelda tears of the kingdom #legend of zelda #zelda fanart #link #daeyumi art #totk link #linktober #linktober 2023 #this is the last piece i did for linktober originally #for day 28 sparkle/bright #tho actually it was the first one I drew for linktober this year lol i’ve actually been waiting a while to post this one #anyways i’m p happy with it actually #exploring the depths in totk is one of my favorite things to do in the game #it’s so scary down there lol but like in a good way?#adventuring is fun

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mochiwei · 6 months

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Day 30: Favorite Game

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sinlizards · 8 months

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[ID: Digital illustration of Phoenix Wright, Akane Kurashiki, and Kaname Date from the shoulders up on a white background. End ID]

minmaxing my breaks inbetween commission work by drawing all 3 of my favorite freaks in one powerful blast

#phoenix wright #akane kurashiki #kaname date #ace attorney #zero escape #ai the somnium files #aitsf #999 #pwaa #my art #fan art #2023 #undescribed #'favorite character' isnt a strong enough phrase for what these guys have done to my mental state #Lizards Turbo Insanity Trio #beatrice is making her way up there tho i just need to fucking Finish the game

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simcardiac-arrested · 6 months

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day 30 - videogame (undertale, fnaf, etc)

somebody get this man some chapstick

#(voice of a guy who’s desperately trying to not give in and watch the movie for the third time in a row) So how’s everyone doing #i haven’t drawn mike in like 5 months this is simply unacceptable. unsustainable #he could fix everything that’s wrong with the world #i have once again changed his design but it’s ok #but yeah as you can see i am very interested with the concept of mike adjusting to living in human society as a weird alive corpse thing #fuuuuckkk AUEJGHHHH i seriously do like movie mike so much i think he and game mike can live in peace and harmony #something so awful is happening to me and it’s past midnight i should NOT be allowed to think aboht my favorite characters #myart #cringetober 2023 #michael afton #mike schmidt #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #can anybody hear me. help. help. MICHAELLLL DONT LEAVE ME HERE UEHGH OUGH MICHAELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

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souperluminal · 1 year

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CONGRATULATIONS GHOST TRICK FANS

#the drawing fern #ghost trick #ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE GAMES #COMING TO SWITCH AND STEAM IN THIS THE YEAR 2023??#HELLL YESSSS

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kcdoos · 1 year

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GHOST TRICK HEADS WE WON

#PLAY GHOST TRICK #ghost trick #ghost trick phantom detective #capcom #nintendo direct #sissel #lynne #nintendo #i love you capcom i love you thank you thank you please play ghost trick this summer 2023 #one of my favorite games ever created and it's so hard to talk about bc it's best played as blind as possible

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ellenent · 6 months

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toon style Kafei!

#still my favorite character from zelda #linktober #linktober 2023 #day 15: favorite character #kafei #majoras mask #majora's mask #loz #tloz #the legend of zelda #nintendo #my art #wind waker style #wind waker #toon style #zelda #legend of zelda #fanart #gaming

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video-game-jams · 5 months

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Super Mario RPG (2023) - Fight Against Culex

#Super Mario #Super Mario RPG (2023)#Video Game Music #Video Game Songs #Mod Favorites

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temeyes · 6 months

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The Night of the Ball (ghostsoap as fe3h's dimiclaude; a bookclub exchange for bressynonym! hehe)

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infinitebrians · 3 months

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Favorite Games of 2023 Part Final: Pokemon Crystal Clear Clown Edition

Pokemon Crystal Clear is a romhack for the Gameboy Color game that mainly advertises itself as Pokemon Crystal modified so now it is entirely playable as a free roaming open world. Clown Edition is just what I called the rom of the game after creating and injecting a pokemon trainer sprite sheet into the game so I can play as my own character, Clown. I played the whole game on my New 3ds XL, it took a quite a bit of effort to get this exact version of the game working on my 3ds. It was incredibly worth it, this is not just my favorite game, but favorite 'game experience', and even easily my new pick for all time favorite pokemon game in the series.

The game itself was fun and a refreshing new way to experience a pokemon game but the overall experience of getting the game working on a hacked 3ds and playing with my own created sprites was in itself a very fun bit of hobby work. It has revived my love for playing older games on real hardware, something that I have found myself continuing to do this year. Also, seeing my own art in the game and said art feel cohesive with the world ruled and I want to experience that more in some other way. This game made me more into pokemon than I have felt with official releases in a pretty long while, and I even liked my time playing Scarlet. I loved playing on a handheld, I loved seeing the really well made art from gen 2, and I loved being able to put a bit of myself into the game as well.

Apologies for how rambley this gets, I really liked the game but still somehow found it hard to really organize my thoughts on why exactly.

I wanted to revisit this hack after briefly trying it in 2018 because of this excellent Hazel video (https://youtu.be/96YimpRHQHs). The video details various life stories while talking about favorite locations in the games getting me to think about my own favorite spots in the games and where I was personally at the time. The video also got me to start realizing that Porygon might be one of my favorite pokemon in the series and caused me to make drawings of them that I'm still quite fond of. This then made me recall Crystal Clear which contains a feature of surprisingly deep character customization including a wide selection of possible starter picks one of which being Porygon. So, compelled by the allure of having a fun adventure with a cyber duck, I picked up my hacked 3ds and started the game again.

Crystal Clear is a game that allowed for me to be even more creative about how to approach building my team and creating my own adventure out of playing pokemon. It's not for everyone, it wasn't even for me the first time I tried this game back in 2018. Crystal Clear definitely lends itself much more to the idea of creating your own fun than typical linear pokemon games where if you're not interested in that more free form exploration, the game would feel aimless. I even felt this when starting this playthrough, but the goal of pokedex completion was what encouraged to explore and discover Crystal Clear's world. The game was always surprising me in both the number of quality of life features it provided as well as fun new areas to explore or to better make the world more connected. Over time, the game felt more at home to me from getting more familiar with locations and developing a new sense of fondness for several towns in Johto I frequented. The change from a linear progression to that open ended one gave me a better sense of the world and towns had a bit more life to them as places felt more inviting to hang around in.

I love this game's implementation of the pokedex. It has been designed so it will display just about every piece of information about a pokemon, where to find them, when they evolve, what moves they learn, and so on. While the presentation is definitely clunky due to having to have all of that information on a GBC screen, I found this such an invaluable tool to have in game that for the first time in the entire pokemon series I was heavily making use of the in game pokedex for its intended purpose. Being able to look up relevant information for pokemon all entirely in game without having to have a phone/computer nearby with bulbapedia open all the time is just greatly appreciated. While the desire to keep some mystery around pokemon and how they evolve or what moves they'll learn can be part of the fun with the series, I think I just prefer being able to tell quickly if this is a stone evolution pokemon or not.

This was the first time I ever completed a pokedex in any pokemon game, something I've always wanted to do but never fully committed to the whole process. This is because of my own laziness toward how challenging that always was in proper releases due to so many pokemon being obscured behind multiple games and others being locked behind real world timed events. That or the fact that later games in the series just outright make the the act of getting a truly complete pokedex feel almost impossible. Instead, I finally accomplished a completed pokedex in a romhack that was made to make that sort of challenge feel reasonable with modified drop pools and changed events so everything within that one game is catchable. While now possible, I still found myself challenged with a game world spanning adventure of looking behind every rock, tree, and patch of grass to find every funny little guy I could. One particular memory was me spending maybe a week insisting on finding a dragonite in an encounter to catch which has a 1% chance of happening rather than spending the time leveling and evolving one instead. A very, very long process of hitting a tree over and over but made hilarious when later repeating the process for a tyranitar, another 1% chance encounter rate, was done in minutes. It was really fun having a plan ahead with how I was going to get every pokemon, constantly using expshare and other things to level guys to get them to evolve while try catching other guys. The ultimate reward of that certificate is still a pretty hilariously small, though I still kind of want to figure out a way to print mine out.

What made this game so special to me was simply just adding Clown to it. A simple change that was a surprisingly complicated process of getting a crash course on how GBC color palettes and size limitations worked and getting my hacked 3ds up to date on its software. Creating the various Clown sprite drawings was fun, I always liked working in those sorts of strict limitations. Then finally getting the injection to work and seeing my own art in game on real hardware felt surreal, something in this handheld game console I've had forever, on a game I loved for years has something I made in it. Even the process of getting all of this working, as tedious as it was moving game saves and getting color values just right, made this whole experience more special to me.

Something I figured while playing this as well as also from now having also played Dragon Warrior 1+2 and also currently Final Fantasy 5, I really love playing things on a handheld. Playing games on a handheld device has been so much more compelling of a thing to me than ever than playing on a proper TV/computer. The aspect of being able to just let the console sit on my desk and simply open and close it when interested made the feeling of investing myself into a game so much easier to approach. I want to just keep playing more old games on a handheld now, I'm already planning on other games to play and how I should definitely hack my Vita. My friends keep tempting me with one of those emulator handhelds and I don't even need one but they look really cool though.

I have so much respect for people who make fan works, hacks, and other unofficial projects it has been just amazing to see passion projects happen all the time in the gaming community. Playing this romhack that's been a years long, ongoing project in two different eras (2018 and then again in 2023) of it's existence has only further cemented my admiration. People wanting to be creative and open about their love for this form of art is such a wonderful thing to behold. These moments of creative passion being shared to everyone feels so important, reminding that the projects with the biggest budgets and names are not the end all be all of the medium, despite their desperation to be so. Thank you so much for wanting to share such lovely things with the world.

#drawdogs #art #pixel art #favorite games of 2023 #writing #pokemon #pokemon crystal clear #clown #fonewearl #porygon2 #umbreon #typhlosion #ampharos #scizor #cloyster

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gaygamer · 4 months

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