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vmeemo · 1 year

Note

probably past the time for them but maybe 1 for the size game?

1 (mile)

River nervous to say the least when it came to their request for Rylee. They know that going to a size that big is under normal circumstances an outright no from the sizeshifting inkling. However to their surprise they found that Rylee was willing to go that size, though with some safety precautions of course, and to bring Hex along as well. Accepting the terms, both the inkling and octoling head towards the meeting place: In Octarian territory, north of the canyon and the valley.

It was a long drive there, and an even longer hike but eventually the two make it to the area where Rylee wants to meet them.

Glancing over at Hex, River stretches their arms before setting them down, "I get that she needed space but why all the way out here? So far..."

Hex takes a breath as well before looking at the inkling, "I get that Rylee wanted me to come along, but why would she need me here as well if you asked for... Whatever it is you asked her about?"

Hearing this makes River realize that she never actually told the octoling what they talked about with Rylee. Letting out a sheepish chuckle they face Hex, nervous to even mention the request.

"Well... I may have asked Rylee to be... Big for me?"

Hex raises an eyebrow at the word 'big', "How big exactly?"

As River is about to say the number, the inkling is interrupted the notification ringing on their phone. They look at what the notification was about, only to blush at what they were looking at.

"O-Oh my." They say, looking at the picture of Rylee. "Hex take a look-" They stop when they too see Hex looking at her own phone with a blush. "Hex?"

"I- Never thought Rylee would wear something like that." The octoling says finally. "And are those my fishnet leggings she's wearing?"

Looking back at the phone to see Rylee's outfit again, they do note that on the inklings legs are in fact fishnet leggings. Though River is more distracted by the tube top that Rylee is wearing, showing off more skin then they ever thought the inkling would show.

That doesn't even compare to the soft chubby belly that is in full view. Now, the belly was River's favourite part of the inklings body, but for this much? Good golly.

Before either of the two could properly answer Rylee, another message appears.

'I'm sure you will be able to appreciate all of me once I'm bigger. Much bigger that is :)'

River looks at this message, wondering what she meant by this before the realization hits her like a truck. "Oh, no."

"What?" Hex says, concerned about River's reaction, "What's going on? How big did you ask Rylee to be?"

The inkling doesn't respond to Hex as they now consider the ramifications of what she asked Rylee to do. It wasn't until she feels a kiss on the lips by Hex, snapping them out of their stupor. "Better?"

"Y-Yeah. Thanks."

Hex nods before her face frowns and crosses her arms, "So tell me. How tall did you ask Rylee to be?"

And like that River immediately became sheepish. "I may have asked her to be..." They squeak out their next words, "One mile?"

The octoling of course, stutters at the number before getting her bearings, "One mile?! River that's huge!"

River nods their head with shame as the octoling chews them out for it. Though before either of them could continue they hear something, or rather, someone in the distance.

"I'm coming~ Better get ready to see me in full~"

They both know that voice all too well. That was Rylee in the distance. And she had to have been growing, because when they look towards where they heard her they can see her grow. While it was tough to tell due to the distance, but the growing inkling was maybe about 60 feet plus and still growing? Not that they would be able to tell, the inkling was growing too fast for both of them to properly judge.

It was when Rylee looked down at the spot where both them and Hex were. A shiver goes down River's back, because despite the fact that they're quickly becoming too small to see, they know that Rylee is looking directly at them. And she's smiling.

The shadow of the giant Rylee grows larger, covering the two in darkness. By now they both can see everything in full, from the yellow tube top she is wearing to the fishnet leggings. It made Rylee look... Beautiful when against the light of the sun.

As if Rylee somehow read their thoughts, the still growing inkling starts to descend towards the two, smile still on her face. Even crouched she still grew at an incredible rate.

Which truth be told, only made Rylee more cute to River, and probably to Hex by extension. When she looks at the octoling they see Hex's face with a hint of blue on it. River would chuckle themself but they too were captivated by Rylee's growth.

What felt like forever eventually became no time at all as Rylee laid on her side, shaking the ground below them. After they both got their footing they look up to see their partner, looking down at them sporting a blue blush of her own.

And Rylee was colossal to say the least. Her head alone was likely taller than five of the the tallest buildings stacked on top of each other in Inkopolis. And yet, despite the massive size between her and River?

They still loved her. And they know Hex does as well. That's why the three of them were in a relationship after all.

Even if Rylee can't hear them, River did their best to shout up at the mile long inkling, "You look beautiful Rylee! I want you to know that! We love you!"

Though Rylee couldn't hear them, she moves her face closer to the ground to where the two were. And she opens her mouth, doing her best to make a careful gust of wind as she says her words.

"And I love you too River, Hex." She says, being careful with her every word, "You two give my life meaning, and for that I am thankful."

She lowers a hand near them, extending a large pinky to them. "If you want, I can let you two walk on my body for a bit? I'll even put you to your favourite spot River. And we both know where that is."

River blushes at being called out like that, but walks over to the pinky and does her best to latch onto it, followed by Hex latching on beside them.

As if Rylee can feel her two partners on her pinky, she carefully lifts them up, shuffling onto her back as she does so. It wasn't long before they're let down at the soft hill that was Rylee's belly.

"Feel free to relax there for as long as you like." She scratches a spot on her belly with her finger, "But if I feel like shrinking back down again I will ok? I generally don't like being this big if I can help it."

Before River could give a signal to tell her that they both understand, she continues speaking, "I'm doing this because I love you two, and wanted you to experience all of me. So when we're done here I will be treating you to ice cream as well. Because I love you two."

River was stunned at this. Going this far to treat the two of them like this? She knew that Rylee was a shy girl, so this amount of boldness was sudden for them. But they also don't mind it either. Just means that she's growing as a person.

"So what now?" River hears Hex beside them, "We're on a mile long inkling and its just the three of us. I think we can figure out how to make this work."

As River nods their head, Hex closes the distance with her lips on theirs, "So I say we do the most intense makeout session ever before inviting Rylee along as well. Girl may be big, but I know that she would want to be a part of this too. Wouldn't you agree?"

Now like a blueberry, River nods with a grin, holding Hex's hand, "Then lets make sure that Rylee knows what she's missing. And we'll start by being in the most visible place possible."

As Hex nods to agree with them, River shuts her up by closing her lips with the octos, landing on the vast space that was Rylee's belly, kissing their lover, while also giving the belly a well earned squeeze every now and then.

After all, River loved Hex and Rylee equally. It's only fair that they all should be a part of the love too right? Even if one of them is currently a mile long she still deserves love.

#splatoon #splatoon 2 #splatoon 3 #inkling #octoling #rylee's tag #river's tag #hex's tag #giant/tiny #g/t #ask #memo answers #writing #memo writes

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coolnonsenseworld · 6 months

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If they figured each other out, they would be able to solve all Voltron synchronization issues in a week

Another art per sold 52 weeks of KICK PDF

linktr.ee/Mezzy

#klance #klance fanart #how are you guys?#december is kicking my ass im preserving energy like klance on downpour #am i making hex references yes #tag your current jams #if youd like to shareee

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kingspacebar · 30 days

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Made a hex maniac trainer character !! What should I name her ?

#my art #my ocs #art #artists on tumblr #artwork #digital art #drawing #original character #fan character #pokemon #espurr #hex maniac #pokemon trainer #unnamed character tag

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aftout · 2 months

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There’s a Spider in my Breakfast Cereal and She Refuses to Leave but I’ve Honestly Grown to Like Her Quite a Bit <- normal au title

#NO IM NOT JOKING ABOUT THAT BEING THE NAME I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE RLLY FUNNY #IT IS FIVE AM AND I AM JUST NOW FINISGING THIS BLESSED BEEEEEEEEEEE #'whats the synopsis' I couldn't even begin to tell you but thoughts are forming. dw about it.#I'll find a tag for this soon whatever im so tired #my art #the hex #inscryption #daniel mullins games #spider cereal (au)

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rrawrrxd · 3 months

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the hex guys line-up

#my art tag #the hex #s@do #swk #super weasel kid #chef bryce #chandrelle stormblaze #lazarus bleeze #rust mcclain #fpp #first person perspective #fpp the hex #rootbeer reggie #jeremiah the hex #rebecha #irving the hex

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underratedgrapeju1ce · 3 months

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is anyone even still in this fandom

#friday night funkin #whitty friday night funkin #vs whitty #fnf whitty #hex fnf #fnf #fnf fanart #fnf mod #hex x whitty #art tag 🪐

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mizukamiyaseiryu · 4 months

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some chibi sticker sets i've worked on in 2023~

#otoart #nijisanji en #nijien #xsoleil #selen tatsuki #enna alouette #shu yamino #uki violeta #aster arcadia #doppio dropscythe #meloco kyoran #hex haywire #kotoka torahime #ver vermillion #vezalius bandage #vantacrow bringer #claude clawmark #unnämed #jesus the tags //

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cyanichexanthine · 2 months

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I saw the cutest little quiz on my dash and I wanted to share it around and see how varied the results are so starting a tagging game 🫠

Find your cosmos persona ✨️ 💫✨

Tagging @potetosaradas @dayglomasochism @pricksanchez @lara60 @scarstarved @darkforze @zanukavat

#tag games #hexed rambles #the quiz was so cute oml #my result though rip haha #It’s a github.io quiz link if anyone is curious of the link btw #it's in the image above too #also if I didnt tag you its not personal I promise #I was kinda just making sure others have people to tag 🫠

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helsex-moved · 6 months

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You threw me straight into inarticulation

[I.D. A digital drawing of Helsknight from the waist up and Evil Xisuma from the shoulders up. Ex is wearing their helmet and Hels is grabbing one of the horns on the helmet, tilting their head back so that he can kiss the top of their helmet. Hels' helmet visor covers the upper half of his face but you can see she's smiling slightly and her other hand is under Ex's chin. There is a vivid pink overlay on the whole drawing and the background and flame of Hels' helmet are similarly pink with lighter hearts and outlines around them. END I.D.]

Version w/o color filter and closeups under the cut

Image 1: [I.D. A digital drawing of Helsknight from the waist up and Evil Xisuma from the shoulders up. Ex is wearing their helmet and Hels is grabbing one of the horns on the helmet, tilting their head back so that he can kiss the top of their helmet. Hels' helmet visor covers the upper half of his face but you can see she's smiling slightly and her other hand is under Ex's chin. There is no overlay on this image and they are both rendered in their normal colors. END I.D.]

Image 2: [I.D. The same as image 1 but the pink filter is back and it is zoomed in and cropped so that Ex's shoulders and most of Hels' body is no longer in frame. END I.D.]

#kirby kreates #exhels #evil xisuma #evil x fanart #helsknight #helsknight fanart #hermitcraft #hermitblr #hermitcraft fanart #hermitshipping #hermitshipblr #hex #helsex #lmk if the amount of saturation here needs any sort of warning/tag #tw fire

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public-trans-it · 8 months

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i would love to hear your dark spore rant. i didnt even know spore had a sequel.

Oh anon. Poor sweet anon. I’m so sorry.

So, the thing about Darkspore is…

… it was a really REALLY… mediocre game.

Like, the moment to moment gameplay was… fine. Just fine. Not incredible. But not BAD! Really, it only had two major flaws:

The first, it was buggy as hell. One particularly nasty bug was present in the games launcher, and on certain systems the game would fail to install at all. They were unable to ever fix this bug, which I speculate was a major reason the game was abandoned by the devs so quickly and lead to it being taken down from every major digital distribution site. You could still install and play it if you already bought it though! If… it actually installed for you.

Which leads us to the second flaw. It’s right there on the box.

“Internet connection required”

The game has Always Online DRM. All the levels, enemies, loot, your entire account, was all stored server side. And servers are expensive. So, when the games bugs became unwieldy and not worth fixing, and they took it offline… it became a money sink. It was a game generating ZERO revenue, but had huge server maintenance costs. So eventually, they just shut down the servers.

It is now very difficult to obtain the game, requiring you to buy one of the few unopened physical copies remaining. And even once you do have it, it is IMPOSSIBLE to play. There is a project called Resurrection Capsule in the works, some fans trying to create a private server for it. But with so much info stored server side, they basically have to recreate entire subsystems from scratch. It’s… not going very fast, and to my knowledge hasn’t been touched in over a year.

Story

The story of the game is pretty basic. A progenitor race of alien super-scientists create a new, synthetic form of DNA, called Exponential-DNA, or E-DNA. This rapidly mutates to create new life, and can be guided to create specific, specialized organisms, condensing thousands of years of evolution to a few hours. It can also be injected into existing creatures to alter them and make them more powerful. However it also linked everything affected by it into a hivemind. So it was outlawed. The creator of it decided to respond by creating a E-DNA virus, called The Darkspore, infecting himself with it, and spreading it across the galaxy and conquering it, wiping out his own race.

You play as another member of that race, who has been in hibernation for 1000 years while that was going down. Your ship AI has woken you up because it has managed to stabilize E-DNA and also keep it disconnected from the hivemind, and needs you to go kill the guy who took over the galaxy. That is how the game starts.

…

And how the story ends. There is not really any more story past that part. You get a cutscene describing each of the games 6 planets the first time you visit it, and a final “Hey you won!” cutscene after killing the final boss which ends with the cliche “implication the villain isn’t really dead” trope, and… that’s it. That’s the entire story. Not really the selling point of this game. Its not even entirely clear if it takes place in the same universe as Spore! It’s just set dressing for “Run through these 24 levels and beat everything up”

Gameplay

Darkspore was created by Maxis. This alone was HUGE. This was a team of developers who only really made lifesims like The Sims and Sim City, taking a stab at making a diablolike game.

And I GENUINELY BELIEVE every single studio out there needs to do shit like this. Designing for something so outside your wheelhouse creates SOOOOO much innovation so quickly. You get fresh new ideas injected into the genre so quickly. The final product won’t be good! You don’t have any damn experience in the genre! But it will create something unique beautiful, and god damn I wish we lived in a world where that alone was enough and devs weren’t focused on chasing profits instead.

Genesis

Genesis is just a fancy way of saying ‘Element’. There are 5 of them: Plasma (fire and lightning), Bio (plants and animals), Cyber (machines), Necro (death and fear), and Quantum (space and time) and the way they interact is… certainly a choice I guess. Each Darkspore you face has a genesis it falls into, and each of your heroes has one as well. If your Genesis matches that of the darkspore you are fighting at the moment, you take double damage and they take half damage. If they don’t match, all damage both ways is neutral.

The system itself is kinda mediocre. The biggest part of it, however, is the Variant Skills. Each Genesis has 4 unique skills tied to it that represent the common elements of that type.

Heroes

There are 25 heroes in the game, which each have one Genesis and one Class (Sentinel which are the tanks, Ravagers which are the DPS, and Tempest which are the Casters/Support)

Each hero has 4 total variants, with the first one you unlock being Alpha, and as you level up your account (heroes do not have their own levels) you eventually can purchase their Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants, with each variant having slightly different stats, and a different one of their Genesis’ 4 variant abilities.

Each hero has a unique basic attack, which USUALLY has a little extra to it. For example Sage shoots a bolt that hurts enemies it hits, but heals allies it hits. Zrin alternates between two different punches, one of which has a short duration DoT and the other of which has a 10% stun chance. Stuff like that.

They also have a passive effect that is always active while you are playing them. Collect a soul from each enemy killed for a 5% damage boost, 10% damage bonus when attacking from behind, a stacking defense buff every time you take damage, stuff like that.

Finally, a character has 2 unique abilities. One that is unique to them and can only be used while you are playing that hero, and a second ability that is everyone in the squad can use if that hero is present.

Squad Decks

Which brings me to the first rant and something I am SO AUTISTIC ABOUT (positive). SQUADS. The game had you craft Squad Decks, collections of 3 heroes that you can swap between during your missions, for a total of 883.2k squad combinations (I think my math might be off on that). Swapping between them is on a cooldown of about 10 seconds, but otherwise is don’t instantaneously and as often as you want without penalty. You always have 5 abilities active:

- The unique ability of your active hero

- The Genesis ability of your active heroes variant

- Hero 1’s Squad ability

- Hero 2’s Squad ability

- Hero 3’s squad ability

The first two abilities change out every time you swap heroes, but the last 3 are fixed. So you have 3 abilities that you always have access to, and 6 abilities that are paired up and you can swap between which pair of those abilities is active.

Your heroes do NOT share a health/energy pool, but DO share healing pickups. Any time you pick up a health or energy restoration pickup, it refills a chunk of the respective health pool of your currently active hero, and a smaller chunk of each of your inactive heroes in the squad.

So the core loop of moment to moment gameplay becomes swapping situationally between heroes both offensively and defensively, to get access to your other heroes skills and also to mitigate damage from enemies based on their genesis or control where your healing is directed.

Loot

Loot in Darkspore is fairly standard for your average Diablolike. Item drops have 4 tiers: Common (Item Level=Account Level-5), Uncommon (Item Level=Account Level), Rarified (Item Level=Account Level+5), and Purified (Item Level=Account Level+10)

Items of higher tiers have more chances to roll on a table to gain beneficial modifiers.

Each item fell into one of a few different categories: Weapon, Hands, Feet, Offensive, Defensive, or Utility.

Each hero has one of each slot, plus an additional slot based on their class. Ravagers have an extra Offense slot, Sentinels have an extra Defense slot, and Tempests have an extra Utility slot. Any hero can equip any item you gain, with the exception of Weapons that are hero specific. Some heroes also lack Hands or Feet, in which case their weapon has extra stats and can get the same modifiers as hands and feet can.

The items you equip can then be added onto the Hero in the Hero Editor. The Hero Editor is often equated to the Creature Editor in Spore, which is BULLSHIT and was a pet peeve of mine the ENTIRE DAMN TIME THE FAME WAS LIVE. This is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE. It uses the outfit editor from the Tribal/Civilization phases of Spore instead. Importantly: this means you cannot alter the overall silhouette of your hero. It will always maintain the same basic profile and animations. However you can freely place the extra parts you equip anywhere on its body, and can also place multiple copies of them.

Additionally, old parts can have their stats stripped, converting them into ‘Detail’ parts with no stats, of which you can equip 6 different parts, each of which you can include 10 copies of on your hero. So you could get some pretty cool looks from it!

However all this loot is garbage and you likely would not use most of it outside of appearance. Which brings me to…

Cash-out Loot

Usually if you mention the word ‘cash’ in any sentence involving a game published by EA, it would be a call for concern. Luckily this isn’t that! It’s just gambling! Everything is fine!

The main progression in Darkspore comes from gear, and the best gear comes from how good your ships engines are. These come from account upgrades as you level up your account, determining how many levels you can do in a row. Every time you complete a level, you are given an option: Keep going, or ‘cash out’ and get a guaranteed piece of Uncommon gear, with a 10% chance of it becoming Rarified, as well as all the gear you picked up in the level.

If you choose to keep going, you have to complete the next level. If you die, you lose ALL the gear you picked up, including that guaranteed piece. If you make it to the end, you are given another choice: Risk it all again and go on to the next level, or stop here and get your TWO pieces of guaranteed uncommon loot, which each now have a 20% chance of becoming rarified and a 5% chance of becoming purified.

You can only go another of levels equal to the number of Engine Upgrades you have earned by leveling up your account. So at first, after the second level you HAVE to cash out. As you progress you can start to do many more levels at a time, getting a dozen pieces of gear that are practically guaranteed to be the highest rank.

But of course you have to play these levels in order, and you don’t get a chance to upgrade your character with all the cool new loot you found on the way, so you can’t just jump straight into this. You have to slowly build up to being able to push yourself this much, and once you can, you have a readily available source of some of the best gear in the game.

And that ties into my absolute favorite system of Darkspore:

Catalysts

Many diablolikes have a mechanic called ‘Sockets’. The gear you equip has its own type of equipment slot, and you put gems in there that give you small bonuses. Every game does it a little differently, but it’s kind of a staple of the series.

Darkspore uses a similar system, but utilizes it VERY differently. While you are running levels, enemies will rarely drop Catalysts instead of loot. These come in 5 colors: Purple (boosts your base stats), Red (boosts offensive secondary stats like damage or attack speed), Blue (boosts defensive secondary stats like health regen or damage resistance), Green (boosts utility secondary stats like movement speed or lifesteal), and Rainbow (can contain any of the bonuses of the previous categories) They also come in two sizes: Big and Small. This determines how big the bonus from them is.

You have a 3x3 grid on your HUD that the catalysts you collect go into. You can rearrange them however you want, and if you create a line of 3 of the same color (Rainbow is a wildcard and matches with all of them), it will double the bonus of all Catalysts in that line. This stacks, meaning if you create multiple lines over a single catalyst it could get a x3, x4, or even x5 bonus if it’s the center piece of the grid and forms a line in every direction.

However, you can’t save Catalysts. You can equip it to the grid or drop it on the ground and move on. That’s it. You have to decide now. Do you keep that Big Purple you have for the big buff to your most important stat, or do you trade it for that Small Rainbow for a mediocre stat you just found that you can plug in the middle and double everything else in your grid?

“Surely that only matters early game, and once you have good catalysts you don’t swap them out that much, right?” I hear the diablolike veterans asking, because that is how socketing works in most of those games. And normally you would be right. Except for one major change: All your catalysts only last until the end of your run. When you get to the cash out screen, and choose to keep going? You keep them. But if you choose to cash out, or if you ever die, your catalysts all vanish. Every new run you have to go through and collect them again, which results in you playing your heroes in new ways and adopting new strategies based on what catalysts drop for you each run.

It’s an INCREDIBLE easy to learn system that adds SO MUCH depth and replayability to the game. I love it so incredibly much. Each mechanic flows elegantly into the the next. The catalysts help you do better runs which gets you better gear which upgrades your heroes which lets you do better runs, the entire spiral being locked into your account level to give a quantifiable metric of how far this spiral is gone. It was so good!

And now, it’s gone forever.

Man that sure was a long post. Friends have heard me go on this rant SO many times. Thank god I never got into a second mediocre game filled with novel innovations that are ultimately lost to time and can never be experienced again due to Always Online DRM making it unplayable. Can you imagine if I didn’t learn my lesson and did that a second time? Ha!

… I never did that again. Right?

… right?

…

HEX: Shards of Fate

Hex was a digital TCG legal battle with TCG elements created by Cryptozoic. It was originally put up on Kickstarter, advertised as a digital card game with both PvE and PvP modes, a unique focus on the design space opened up by being a digital game, and gameplay damn near identical to Magic: The Gathering.

The thinly veiled truth was that this game was never meant to succeed. They had hoped it would, and it would be great if it did, but I’m fairly certain that was always a secondary objective. The first objective was to get sued by Wizards of the Coast over the similarities to Magic: The Gathering.

Now, that might sound strange to an outsider, but to anyone in the industry, they are probably nodding along and going “Yeah that tracks actually.”

You see, Wizards of the Coast is… bad. Really bad. They do everything in their power to choke the life out of the industry and have resorted to a lot of questionable tactics to do so. One of these is against anyone who develops any form of trading card game. You see, WotC has a patent on booster packs, customizable decks of cards, and turning cards sideways.

Literally.

U.S. Patent No 5,662,332 (A)

It is not a coincidence that the second two biggest names in TCGs don’t involve turning your cards sideways. Konami contested that Yugioh was different enough to not violate the patent.

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Nintendo actually hired WotC to design the Pokémon TCG to NOT violate the patent in return for WotC getting to distribute the first few sets. WotC gladly accepted, distributed the game, got their cut of the sales, and as soon as that was over….

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Every single other game out there ended up paying royalties to WotC. Because the cut of the sales to WotC was cheaper than going to court even if you won. WotC had their fingers in every pie, but was smart enough to make sure not to piss people off so much that refusal was ever a viable option.

Cryptozoic was a company that, at the time, was making several licensed TCGs. The big one that jumps out was the World of Warcraft TCG, which they were in charge of (though it was originally made by Upper Deck). Cryptozoic was begrudgingly paying royalties because having the WoWTCG license was too good and they didn’t want to give that up. Then Hearthstone happened and Cryptozoic was going to lose the WoWTCG license as it got discontinued.

So Cryptozoic set up their new game, Hex, specifically to bait WotC into suing them, so they could get the patent overturned.

See, the patent isn’t actually valid. You cannot patent a game mechanic. There are certainly aspects of the patent that ARE valid and CAN be enforced, but the parts about mechanics can’t actually be enforced. WotC uses it because people can’t contest it, but if it actually was used in court it would get overturned VERY easily, and WotC would be declawed.

So Cryptozoic created a game that was a clone of MtG, used a Kickstarter to build up a large amount of legal funds, and got sued by WotC! Yes! Exactly what they wanted!

… and then they settled out of court.

Sigh.

I guess I’ll talk about the game now.

Lore

The lore of the game was solid. Pretty typical fantasy setting. Humans and elves and sort of racist orcs (better than most other orcs I’ve seen at least) and extremely racist tribal coyote people make up the good guys. Undead, spider-orcs, dwarves, and also pretty racist samurai rabbit people make up the bad guys.

There are two types of magic in the world: Blood magic and Wild magic. Elves are adept at wild magic. Shin’hare (the rabbit people) are adept at wild magic as well. The Shin’hare tried to take over the world, forcing the Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Cyotle to ally together to drive them underground into the underworld.

There the Shin’hare met and allied with the Vennen, an all male race descended from Orcs. They were adept blood mages, and they procreated by kidnapping orcs and using them as incubators for spiders. I fucking love the Vennen. I’ll focus on them a lot in this. The Vennen taught the Shin’hare how to sacrifice their young for more power.

The two then allied with the Dwarves, a genderless race of sentient stone statues who excel at creating machinery, and who believe the world itself is a giant machine. Specifically, a weapon of mass destruction, and they are trying to set it off. They believe blowing people the fuck up to be their natural calling.

The underworld and overworld forces go back and forth a bit, with the Elves doing a large chunk of the work as the only overworld race that can use magic.

Then Hex happened. Hex is a massive meteor made up of Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire. Hex punched clean through the world, scattering gems all across it, before stabilizing in orbit on the other side, becoming the worlds moon.

These gems were incredibly magical, allowing every race to now use magic. Diamonds were restorative, bringing life to things. Rubies were extremely destructive and burned bright and hot and quickly. Sapphire allowed finesse manipulation and control over water. These

Yes this is just the MtG color pie.

Eventually, humanity stumbled into one of their old crypts that was very close to the impact site of Hex, and found it CRAWLING with undead. They were taking the Diamonds from Hex and putting them into the eye sockets of human corpses, causing those corpses to reanimate. These were NOT actually undead, but an alien consciousness that existed within the gems that were using human corpses as a host.

The Necrotic sought a peaceful and symbiotic relationship with humanity as thanks for the use of the bodies. Humanity responded by getting really pissed off that the Necrotic were grave robbing, and went to war over it. Eventually the Necrotic retreated deep into the underworld and allied with the other races instead, eventually helping the Shin’hare with a second attack on the surface.

The lore has a lot more depth than that, but that’s the basic. I liked it a lot. The Orcs being good guys who just really liked tests of strength was a refreshing take on orcs. I liked them a lot. The extremely racist caricature that made up the Cyotle and the Shin’hare? Less so.

Digital Design Space

As for the actual gameplay… it was MtG. Like, almost 1:1.

Like…

Seriously.

Shards work similarly to Lands, with there being 5 basic shards, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Wild, and Blood. You can only play one Shard per turn and when you do you get 1/1 Resource. 1 resource to spend on this turn, and 1 permanent resource. You spend that resource to play a card that costs 1, and you go down to 0/1 resources. Start of your turn, you would go back up to 1/1 resource.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Resources are a card type like in MtG, but once it’s played it acts as a perpetual resource like the Mana in Hearthstone, with no need to care about where the resource is coming from.

… wait a second though, this is a MtG clone. It uses the color pie. Caring where those resources come from is KIND OF a big deal in MtG.

Which is the first really cool difference between Hex and MtG! THRESHOLD! Each time you play a shard you gain 1 threshold in that color. To play a card, you have to have at least as many threshold as are displayed below its cost. See that purple dot below Murder? That means you need 1 blood threshold to play it.

Threshold is NOT consumed when you play a card, which DRASTICALLY alters deckbuilding and how feasible multi-color decks are.

For example, in MtG, if you had 4 swamps and 1 mountain in play, and 5 cards in hand that all cost R…. You can play 1 whole card this turn.

In Hex, if you have 4 Blood and 1 Ruby, and have 5 cards that all cost 1 and have a single Ruby threshold, you can play your entire hand that turn. This made it incredibly viable to splash colors in relatively smaller amounts. It also opened up cool new design space, like cards that cost 1 but still required 3 threshold in a color. Or cards that require 1 threshold of every type to activate a bonus effect (very common among Necrotic) or… for sockets!

HEY WE ARE COMING FULL CIRCLE!

Remember how I mentioned Diablolike games having sockets, but how Darkspore didn’t use it? Well Hex DOES. There was a pair of keywords called Socketable Major and Socketable Minor. Each set, there would be 10 gems (two of each color) that rotated out for Socketable cards. Cards with Major sockets could equip any gem, while minor sockets could only equip half of them. So for example the current rotation might have the Sapphire gems be “While you have at least 1 Sapphire Threshold, this card has Flying” for its Minor gem, and “When you play this card, if you have at least 3 Sapphire Threshold, target player draws 3 cards”

You chose which gem was in each Socketable card during deckbuilding. Different copies of the same card could have different gems equipped, or you could have the same gem equipped across multiple different cards. It was basically a way to go “This card was designed to be splashed in other color decks. You pick what that other color is.”

It opened up a lot of design space! This was something Hex did VERY well. They knew they were making a MtG clone, but they weren’t beholden to the same restrictions a physical card game did, and they THRIVED in those areas.

For example, REPLICATORS GAMBIT, a one cost card that creates six copies of a troop (read: creature) that just… could not exist in MtG.

Another example of this was in my favorite archetype in Hex: Mill. Now, I’m not normally a blue player. I’m not a big fan of the ‘you don’t get to play the game’ archetype. Even mill isn’t really my thing. But the way it worked in HexTCG? God I loved it. I wish I could see my opponents faces as they reached a trembling hand out to their bloated, grotesque deck, a cruel mockery of what it once was. They had started the match with only 60 cards, but now it held twice that number. Knowing every draw was more likely to bring their own skittering death out.

…

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Vennen are, in MtG terms, tribal Blue/Black with a focus on control. Specifically an aggressive form of control. Your wincon is still ‘beat your opponent to death’, but the means by which you do it is… spiders.

Lots of Vennen cards work by still allowing your opponent to do the thing that you blocked, but it now creates Spider Eggs in their deck. Lock down a creature as it enters play with ‘Everytime this creature becomes tapped, shuffle 3 spider eggs into your deck’ or ‘Whenever an opponent draws a third card this turn add a spider egg to their deck’ or ‘When this creature is destroyed add a spider egg to your opponent’s deck’ and when they DRAW a spider egg… well… the effect of a spider egg is more or less ‘When this card enters your hand or graveyard, draw/discard another card into that zone and destroy this one. Your opponent creates a Spiderling and puts it in play. “

Spiderlings are 1/1 Unblockable creatures.

The Vennen win con is to just fill your opponent with spiders and then shred them apart once the spiders start hatching. It was a DELIGHTFUL playstyle.

PvE

Hex also features a fairly robust PvE mode with a point crawl encounter map that was quite delightful. There were cards unique to PvE, but all PvP cards were also legal in PvE. In general, all your staples came from PvP and were the same core staples everyone uses to win (they were very generous with handing out common/uncommon PvP cards in the single player mode, which in turn also made Pauper a very popular format), however you also had PvE cards which made up your win cons. PvE cards weren’t balanced as tightly, and allowed to just be dumb overpowered bullshit just because it’s fun to use dumb overpowered bullshit sometimes!

There were also equipment slots that would modify the cards in your deck, turning PvP cards into PvE cards. For example, Replicators Gambit made it so that EVERY copy of that card gained that text.

PvE started with character creation. You would create a character that was one of the 8 races, and one of 6 3 different classes. Warrior, Cleric, or Ranger. I think there was a late update that added Mage but I don’t recall too clearly, and it isn’t document online anymore as far as I can tell!

Each class had a unique talent tree that you could customize and change how you played. Your race determined what colors you could play, and your level determined how many of each rarity you could play.

I played a Vennen Cleric. Cleric’s whole thing was that you would gain Blessings, 0 cost cards that would rise in your deck each turn, and could be played to draw a card as well as additional effects based on your build. My blessings put more eggs in the enemy deck, to the surprise of no one.

As you went from encounter to encounter you would earn new cards to modify your deck, swapping decks between fights. Then there were dungeons, long laborious streaks of a dozen or so encounters, with branching paths and decisions to be made, earning you tons of new packs and equipment and experience to boost your character. One especially fun encounter was crossing a desert with a pack of… I think it was gnomes? There were 20 of them that needed rescuing. The way you rescued them was putting them in your deck, and then leaving the desert through a single combat encounter. Except they were AWFUL. Like 3 cost vanilla 1/1’s level of awful. The more you had in your deck, the harder the encounter became. It was a really nice way to portray the logistical challenge of trying to fight while protecting all these useless tagalongs.

There were plans to even introduce Raids, 3v1 PvE encounters, but they fizzled out as the game got sunset.

The game was good. REALLY good. It relished in the digital design space in a way I haven’t quite seen since then. A few games, like Legends of Runeterra, have come close, but always fall short, and that’s so sad! I DESPERATELY want to play a TCG with this level of customization again!

Luckily that was the end of it. I finally learned the error of my ways, never touched anything ‘always online’ again, and now can live a life without regrets! … except Legends of Runeterra a little bit like I mentioned above but THATS IT! There are no other always online games I have regrets about!

…

ToonTown Online

Okay no, not seriously. I’ve never played toontown. But honestly it looked kinda silly and like a shitpost in video game form. I think it would have been fun to try at some point with a few friends. Not seriously, just to screw around in for a bit.

Never going to get that chance. Just like nearly everyone reading this will never get to play two of my biggest influences that shaped how I think about game design.

Always Online DRM is an insidious beast. It doesn’t just kill games, it kills *archival*. All we have left of these games is a relatively small number of gameplay videos. I was planning on having a lot more pictures in this post of all the interface elements I was talking about as I talked about them, but there just… aren’t any good pictures of them. Even these details are based on my own memory cross referenced with a couple of wikis, and even those were sparse.

Some games can’t feasibly avoid Always Online. MMO’s are a big example. But by adding it into a game that has a single player experience involved, and not making that single player experience a standalone thing on its own, you are destroying any hope that your game will be remembered. It will fade into obscurity. There will never be a cult revival. Your work will be discarded and forgotten and it’s… so incredibly sad to see.

I jokingly titled this section being about ToonTown, but really this section is about Kingdom Hearts: Union X. It was a mediocre and disgustingly predatory gacha. It was horribly managed with horrible issues around localization and it was just… a mess. But it was part of the world of Kingdom Hearts, and it’s story was important and mattered.

The game is no longer playable, but it’s also not entirely lost. The devs created a new version of it, as a gallery to view the cutscenes. The single-player side mode, Dark Road, is also included. The devs didn’t have to do this. They could have gone the same route as Darkspore and HexTCG, and had their work be forgotten. They chose to save it. Not in full, but at least the parts the deemed important.

It also makes me wonder how much this happens in other mediums. Ludology is a pretty new field, and it rarely goes into specific games and their impact on the medium, mostly just focusing on the impacts they have on humanity, rather than the mechanics themselves as these beautiful pieces of art. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with say… film critics. Are there any indie film makers who are deep in the paint of indie films and critique of not just the films themselves, but the very techniques being used, just sitting there going “It’s so upsetting that this big studio managed to do something this beautiful and all of us in the scene recognize it’s beauty, but no one else seems to, and now it’s gone?”

… as I’m writing this I actually realize that this does happen there. It’s how I found out about what became my favorite film of all time, The Man From Earth. It’s a small film that flopped horribly in theaters, and only gained any attention by being pirated by a lot by indies who wanted to talk about it. It’s a good movie, highly recommend. Not for everyone though.

I don’t know. I’m sure I had a point with all this but… seeing it happen again and again and now with streaming services taking stuff down it’s just… I can’t help but seeing not just more and more games, but more and more of EVERY artistic medium ending up in this area. How many digital artists entire portfolios have vanished off the face of the earth because their tumblr got deactivated? How many movies are going to be gone forever when Netflix eventually goes out of business? We can’t even rely on piracy! Many old pieces of media is just lost forever. Just ask the Doctor Who fandom. They probably know more about that than anyone else at this point.

But mostly I just really wish more developers would consider what parts of their games are important, and what kind of legacy they want to leave, instead of just what will generate a short burst of profit, with no care for what happens after.

… I should start doing video essays with how long this got. It’s like some kind of text based video essay. A text essay. Those are a new thing I just invented.

#Darkspore #Spore #Those are the only two tags on this post because those are the only games I talk about don’t worry about it. it’s fine. don’t read further.#HexTCG #Hex: Shards of Fate #Kingdom Hearts: Union X #Always Online DRM #The Man From Earth #I swear to god if anyone tells me I should just play Temo on LoR I will scream #YES I KNOW AND I DO #but also LoR sucks #and also that is missing THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RANT #the SAME THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO LEGENDS OF RUNETERRA #maybe not soon #but it WILL die someday #and be gone forever #because it isn’t being preserved #Text Essay

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vmeemo · 1 year

Text

Squidmas Delivery, Chapter 2

Rylee, to say the least, was... Not expecting her night to go like this. The most she had planned out was snuggling with her two partners before watching some Squidmas movie. Though with the storm that was going on, she didn't think that the movie would end up happening.

However something else came up instead. And that something or rather, someone, is now sitting on her couch and asking the three of them to take over being Father Squidmas for the night.

And from what she can see, even the candy crab was giving the guy a insinuating look about this before objecting, "Sir you can't be serious! These three wouldn't be able to do your job even if they tried!"

The manatee shakes his head and looks to the others, "Trust me Valorie. I do not make mistakes lightly. These three can do it." He looks over at Rylee with a twinkle in his eye, "Especially you young lady. You have a very special ability that can help out with this."

Except for the candy crab, everyone knew what he was talking about. Rylee's special power, the one she thought was a curse for a time. The ability to shift her size at will. Taking a deep breath the inkling steps forward.

"How do you think my power will help you?" She asked, "I'm not... Really magic like you are."

Squidmas shakes his head, "I beg to differ. With your power, you could deliver presents at a massive size, even making yourself smaller to go down the chimney." He looks at River and Hex, "And your friends can help keep track of deliveries, even help you in their own ways. And of course I can always send Valorie for extra assistance if you need it."

While Rylee was starting to think about the idea, River grabs her hand, pulling her to the side, "Rylee... I don't know about this. I'm already skeptical about the situation as it is but now? Say that we do take over for the night. We know next to nothing about delivering presents. Even less about being the guy." The inkling looks away from Rylee's face, "I just don't know..."

The shorter inkling can see where they're coming from. No one besides the man himself knows how to do it like he does. And travelling around the world in a single night is already a daunting task enough. However...

"I understand that Rivi." Rylee gently cups their face, "But to tell you the truth, I think we can do it. I got you and Hex after all. And isn't love stronger on Squidmas or something?"

The inkling pauses at what she said before letting out a light laugh, "Cheesy as you are Rylee, you know how to get me agreeing on your crazy ideas. Even if you did falter a little at the end there."

Rylee giggles a little at this before looking at Father Squidmas. “I would be honored to take over for you tonight. We won’t let you down.”

The smile returns on the manatee’s face before letting out a billowing laugh, “Ho ho ho! Great news! I am sure you three will do wonders! And young lady-” He digs into his red suit, pulling out three red fuzzy hats, holding them out to Rylee, “You need to look the part after all. And in your case, it will help conceal you from sight when you use your power, in addition to temporarily extending it to the presents.”

Holding the hat in her hands, the sizeshifter puts it on her head, it fitting perfectly. “It’s great! Thanks.” Holding out a hat to both River and Hex they take one as well, placing it on their heads. Father Squidmas smiles as he sees the three dressed up in front of him before turning to Valorie. “While I rest here, I need you to assist them in deliveries. Can you do that for me?”

Rylee can see her face scrunch up before letting out some air, “Yes sir... I will do my best. Squidmas will be done.”

“I’m sure it will. Now then-” He takes a breath before letting himself rest on the couch, “I will do my best to rest while you four are out. Do me proud ladies.”

Everyone can feel the sincereness of the manatee’s words as they all look at each other. Rylee sees the candy crab, Valorie, approach her, “We need to get going in that case. So get yourselves ready and meet me out front. I’ll go get the sleigh in the meantime.” Rylee nods, the crab leaving the three as she looks to the others. Understanding what she was about to ask, the two walk off to get themselves ready, leaving Rylee to do the same.

------

Minutes later, outside Rylee’s home

Standing out in the cold doesn’t make the inkling feel better, even with her partners beside her. The only saving grace was that the sleigh, pulled by giant clams, arrived shortly after they came outside, with Valorie holding the reins. Seeing the look on the crabs face, the three get on the sleigh, getting themselves comfortable. Or at least, as comfortable as they can before Valorie cracks the reins, making the sleigh shoot off the ground and into the sky.

River gets their bearings, glaring at the crab, “Couldn’t have waited a few more seconds?!”

Valorie side-eyes them before looking forward, guiding the sleigh into the air before straightening out. Seeing that they're being ignored River leans back in the seat, blowing some air out.

Rylee on the other hand tries to break the ice with the candy crab. Since she will be with them making deliveries and whatnot. "So... How long have you known Father Squidmas for?" There wasn't an answer from the crab. Giving them a weak smile the inkling gets herself comfortable beside River and Hex. She glances over at the back of the sleigh, watching the city lights go by further and further away from them.

"Soooo..." Rylee starts to say again, "Where are we deliverin' to this time? I imagine since we're flying away from Inkopolis that means he finished up the area?"

When there wasn't a response again, she considers giving up talking to Valorie anymore. "Yes." Rylee looks at the candy crab, "He finished the area up. I covered for him while you three were outside."

The inkling nods at this when something occurs to her about that statement. "Wait we were only outside for like two minutes? How did you?"

Valorie lets out a chuckle, "I'm quick at my job."

As Rylee sits there impressed at the smaller crab, Hex leans to River's ear, "Do you think this was a good idea? Like I know we agreed to it and everything but..." The octoling glances at Rylee, "You ever think we're too soft with her?"

River lets out some air before gently clasping their hand with the octos, "Sometimes. But if we weren't as soft with her this relationship wouldn't work out as well as it does."

Hex stares at them before letting out a small hum, leaning against the inkling, "You aren't wrong about that. It's what we both like about her. Wouldn't be the same otherwise."

The two sit in silence after that, feeling the wind blow over the sleigh. They're happy that it's not nearly as cold as River thought it would be, though it might be due to whatever magic this sleigh has. The man likely gets cold doing this for hours on end so why not have a heated sleigh? As River lets themself relax holding Hex's hand, Rylee tugs on their coat.

"River!" Rylee says with excitement, pointing ahead of them, "We're approaching the Crabibbean Islands!"

Looking to where she was pointing, River sits in amazement as the lights of the island still shine bright even in the dead of night. The inkling can see the joy in Rylee's eyes as they approach the islands. Though their own amazement was soon blunted by the candy crab that was riding along side them.

“Alright you three.” Valorie grunts, not looking back at them, “We need to deliver these presents pronto. So you three need to figure out how that’s going to get done.”

Rylee thinks for a moment before looking over at the bag, “Can the bag be split into more bags? Like one for each of us?”

“No it can’t.” Valorie clicks at this. As Rylee is mildly upset that her idea wasn’t gonna work she speaks again, “There are spares however. Emergencies for the rarest of situations. They’re just under the seat.”

As Rylee smiles and digs under the seat, Hex leans towards her, “So what’s the plan ‘Lee? Whatcha got in that brain of yours?”

Once the inkling finds the bags she holds them out to Rylee and Hex, smile still on her face “I’m gonna take the main bag. You two will take some presents and I’ll take the rest.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“You’ll see. Valorie can you park somewhere?” Grumbling ‘This isn’t a taxi.’ to herself, Valorie dips the sleigh down towards the ground near the outskirts. Once it was close enough, Rylee empties the main bag a little bit, filling the two smaller bags with presents. “Ok, here’s the plan. River and Hex, you two will deliver presents the classic way. Go up on the roof, slide it down, that fun stuff. I on the other hand-”

Rylee hops out of the sleigh, increasing her size as she does so. “Will cover the rest. I’ll walk towards the other islands, deliver presents that way while making myself huge.”

River grimaces at the idea before letting out a sigh, “Ok. Only because that hat protects you from being seen. If what Father Squidmas was saying is true, then you will be safe from being seen. Just- Be careful Rylee.”

Grinning at this, Rylee leans in to give both River and Hex a kiss with her ever-growing lips, “I will. Trust me, I know what I’m doing!”

Now at about 15 feet tall, Rylee effortlessly lifts the diminishing sack of presents, carefully holding it. “Just be safe for me as well. If you need me just look for the 50 to maybe 70 foot inkling wearing a Squidmas hat. Love you!”

Both the inkling and octoling blush at the kiss given to them before waving the growing inkling off. “Love you too Rylee. Good luck with the deliveries!”

The giant inkling waves back before approaching 25 feet already. As she gets further away with every footstep, River looks to the candy crab, who is wide-eyed at the inkling walking away, “Well then.” Valorie blinks, looking at River, “Let’s get going. We got Squidmas presents to deliver. Wanna lift us off?”

“I- Uh-” Shaking back to attention Valorie cracks the reins, “Yeah, lets get busy.” With that said, the sleigh flies up into the air once more, ready to head to another part of the island to make deliveries.

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#splatoon #splatoon 2 #splatoon 3 #giant/tiny #g/t #rylee's tag #hex's tag #river's tag #memo writes #writing

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