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#tell me if i should ye

inkskinned · 1 year

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she says he won't let her get a dog, which is fine, because they're in an apartment, and that's the kind of thing people say about their partners. he won't let me get a dog. and you're at a dinner party and you tilt your head a little to the side just like that dog he won't let her get, because is this the thing that's going to upset you? you don't know every corner of their relationship, she could be joking, they could have had so many healthy conversations about the dog, right, and maybe she's not letting herself get the dog because of money and time and whatever. but, like, she did say let

and she wants to move away from his hometown and he wants to stay and then he tells you with a wink and a conspiratorial stage whisper don't worry i'll convince her and she laughs about it - so clearly this is something they laugh about. but you do just stand there and stare at him like what the fuck, man. you can't say what you want to say which is why do you get the final say on everything because they're both obviously aware of the other person's stance on this and have obviously had private conversations about it and what are you going to do about it except make a scene and then he'll be mad at you and call you one of those bitches behind your back and she'll cut you off, which is a loss that doesn't feel worth it just because he makes you a little skeeved out every 3rd comment

and they both agree he just isn't the type to get flowers which is fine because everyone shows love differently, and are you really gonna judge someone based on their sense of individual relationship responsibility? maybe he's constantly cleaning her car and writing her poems and making her furniture or something. maybe she doesn't even like flowers and this is perfect, actually. and no you couldn't date him, obviously, ew; but like, she tells you she's happy. you almost send her a tiktok that says don't be 25 and the cool girl that doesn't need anything, you'll hate not getting flowers at 30, but that's like, starting drama & you shouldn't start drama needlessly.

and you're a little older than her but not so much older you can pull the whole trust me on this one babe thing and besides that wouldn't have worked anyway (when does it ever) and besides you have trauma so you and your therapist both agree that you're always looking for a problem even when there isn't one. and you tell yourself that just because you see them for 15 minutes every month does not mean you can identify every single red flag based on a single shitty half-joking(?) comment

and besides, what are you going to do? she says i actually wanted another stand mixer but thankfully he stops me when i'm about to spend too much money and you're standing there like are you okay? is this normal? is this just something people say? and again - what are you going to do?

to your therapist you try to language it - it's not, like, any of my business. but sometimes, doesn't it feel like - you should do something. there's got to be something, right? you've tried dropping little hints but they sail right through and you've tried having a single serious conversation and she got upset because why does it matter to you, yes it's different but we're happy, it doesn't need to make sense to you and you're like. really unwilling to push a boundary about it anymore; because the truth is that you know logically it shouldn't matter to you, as long as both parties are happy.

and besides, you've been wrong before. it's just... like, every time you see them both, something else happens, some kind of shiver down your spine like do you even hear each other when you talk. it's their strange, bickering orbit. just the way he's on his phone through dinner or watching sports instead of helping in the kitchen or, fuck, another one of these little throwaway comments he makes about we'll see about that, babe. she laughs when he calls her passions stupid shit and meanwhile she gets him tickets to see the knicks and he tells you well at least she's smart about something and still! it's none of your business.

you say get the dog anyway and she laughs. like, this is is you being funny. and not you saying - no really. get the dog. get the dog and get out of here. pack up and start running.

#this btw is not including toxic friendships this is legit just something ive experienced MANY times now #writeblr #you ever have a friend in one of those relationships where ur like #u don't HATE their partner explicitly #but ur like. what the fuck y'all #like the weird part of being an adult is that you can't be like . CERTAIN their relationship is toxic #and also if u move too fast or push too hard u can hurt someone who is already in a scary situation so you just are like #frozen there. laughing awkwardly. saying ''haha..... yeah..... couldn't be me....''#and like u can't tell - is this banter or does he actually think like. he's better than her.#all you can do is be there for your friend and hope they wake up to it #or ... that it really IS good #and it's just odd to you #tbh btw id rather have my friends feel safe coming to me if they have a concern about my relationship #like yes it's not ur business but it also IS bc im making u hang out with them and also ur my friend #it's a weird thing to experience as an adult bc it is such a blurry line and when u spend time #around couples that aren't like ACTUALLY ur friends but instead ''extended friend circle'' ur like #.... i don't know y'all well enough and he just called you a cow. and ur okay with that . and i don't know how to respond.#so ur like :) okay. um. go to couple's counselling i think #but also you are NOT supposed to pass judgement so it's like.... this weird limbo of feeling like you SHOULD say something #but knowing you CANNOT #idk that there's a way to resolve it!!!!!!!! it's probably a different approach person to person #edited my tags bc tumblr's new system fucked em up #PS EDIT: btw i should have said:#the pronouns in this can work in any and every direction. every gender and every sexuality and every #type of relationship tbh. even non-romantic relationships where ur like ''what do u mean ur bff calls u stupid''

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cupcakesmoothie · 1 year

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I did all three backstories for Touchstarved (I have 12 hours on this thing and it's only the demo)

Kuras and Vere don't seem to have red options, but Vere does have a secret ending and Kuras... I don't know, holds you for a bit longer?

For Mhin, it really is just picking The Alchemist backstory. You can call them short or whatever and you'll still get it.

For Leander, you have to take the flowers and keep touching him. It's okay if you hold back the first time even.

For Ais, you gotta tell him fuck you and pet the soulless, and after that red option pretty much all yours.

Differences I found between the three backstories:

It is pretty much like how they tell you, Oracle gets premonitions, Hound has experience with people and survival, and Alchemist has knowledge about magic and science, so there's different things you find out with each one.

The Alchemist:

I may be a little bit biased, but think The Alchemist is the most informative (It's also the first one I picked). There's the expected info of noticing that Vere's collar is enchanted, or knowing about how strong Leander really is when it comes to magic, but it's got the added bonus of MC's mentor having been in the Senobium in the past.

Compared to the others, The Alchemist is more familiar with Senobium, albeit through word of mouth. It's interesting how many times the MC says something similar to "I didn't know the Senobium did that." It calls into question whether MC's teacher was lying, or more interestingly (and what I think might be the case), the Senobium has changed a lot recently. It's talked about, even without the Alchemist backstory, that the Senobium used to be somewhere you could go to for help, but now most of the characters you meet do not like the Senobium, so what changed?

The Hound:

The Hound (the least popular option, apparently) was pretty fun. The Hound notices more about Ais, specifically that he's very suited to be a leader, and that the number of scars he has (one) seems suspicious for his temperament (or "how seasoned he acts", as the MC puts it).

One thing that I found very fun was doing Mhin's route as the Hound. They're somewhat able to keep up! They can (or tried to) recognize tells, and noted that Mhin was one of the few people who was able to sneak up on them. They also weren't sure how Vere managed to get their key. They were also prepared to steal to survive.

The Oracle:

While The Hound notices physical things, the Oracle notices... how do you say, otherworldly things. The Seaspring seems to be hiding a lot (of course it is), but the MC notices a heartbeat. A presence. They feel something from Ais. The name Ocudeus means something, they can feel it. They feel like they can see Ais' tattoo move.

Also, the MC feels something from Mhin and Kuras (in his clinic at least), which is interesting!

If I had to decide which love interest was better with which backstory...

Vere: The fact that the Alchemist thought that they could tell what enchantments were on his collar if only they could touch it feels promising! And both their connections (though I mean connection in the loosest term for MC here) to the Senobium makes it feel like you might very well find something.

The Hound might be one of the few who can actually survive this guy if I'm gonna be honest. (I mean you can still get killed by him but. You know.)

Ais: The Oracle's sixth sense makes going to the Seaspring a lot more interesting compared to the others, and the way they can feel something from Ais is very cool.

The Hound can tell his character better than the others, and I wonder how that will come into play later on.

Kuras: The Alchemist knows their way around spell-crafting and alchemy (When I picked this I wondered if they would be able to help Kuras around the clinic, which doesn't happen, but hey it might).

The Oracle seems to also feel something from him.

Mhin: First things first, their red option literally requires you to have the Alchemist backstory. Mhin's precision is noticed by the other MCs sure, but not to that detail.

Watching the Hound observe where they could be was so fun to watch. It feels like this MC will be able to keep up.

The Oracle feels something from Mhin, something inhuman.

Leander: The Alchemist was able to tell that the flash of magic was a barrier spell, and that most magic (or at least the ones they're familiar with) uses an incantation or spell circle. His didn't.

But either way, there will be things to find no matter the backstory you choose, and all of the character's stories are intertwined, so don't let this dissuade you from a specific backstory! There will always be things to find, you just need to look.

Extra: I found it pretty cool how each MC has a different way of knowing what a Groupmind is. Story-wise this makes sense of course, but each of their reactions to it are slightly different, from I heard this from rumours of people in cults (Hound), to I used to be told I could put people in a groupmind (Oracle), to legends suggest it was possible with a strong enough catalyst but it's never been done before (Alchemist).

Also, it's interesting to know what they each think of surroundings (specifically the Amaryllis district). They all have different opinions from I used to be told bizarre things about this place and now I kinda get it (Alchemist), to it's not that different from the place I grew up in (Hound), to it's VERY different from where I grew up in (Oracle).

And if I'm not mistaken, the reason Vere gives for your desperation is different for all of them!

You can find gameplay from me on my Youtube channel, or watch me getting all the red options and secret ending here:

youtube

I didn't read it out loud cause my mic sorta sucks and sometimes it peaks and gets a bit shrill. Also you see how my mouse moves sometimes? It means I'm screaming. I don't think I'd have been able to keep calm enough for this. Also my reading kinda sucks anyway hope you like it lol

#If you guys watch the 3 hour unedited version and find my friend going online please tell me the timestamp #I cannot find it #There are two and I found one of them #It's a fun little easter egg I guess. If you even care #Touchstarved #Touchstarved game #touchstarved spoilers #I had fun doing this #sweetmountainseeds #Oh btw #I may be wrong #Yes I replayed the game four times #But I might be wrong #There might be things you need/don't need to do #I can't really tell anymore #I mean everything here should be right but do correct me if I'm wrong

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shuploc · 18 days

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Neil mentioned at the end of his stream today he'll be adding a new print to his Streamily soon, it is perhaps your liveaction Astarion drawing he was talking about? sorry if I'm mistaken

No, you're absolutely right! 😃 I was told to reach out to him about a week ago and was asked if he could have permission to use my "Neilstarion" drawing for his Streamily and for prints at cons for people who want to get something signed, but didn't bring anything themselves. To which I of course said yes!

Even though I had said it wasn't necessary to compensate me, Neil really insisted that he did, which is super sweet of him. But yes! You're right indeed 😊 I'm not sure if other prints will be added besides mine though, but I suppose we'll see. I'm very excited!

#I usually have his streams on in the background' but the one time where I should have been in chat I wasn't lmao #I was busy working #but so many of you guys ended up dm'ing me on different sites to tell me he was asking for me' WHICH WAS SO SWEET OF YOU' THANK YOU #and so of course I reached out as soon as I knew #but yes! you're very much not mistaken #thank you for wanting to reach to me to ask! ❤️

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fategoflatass · 3 months

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I used to be so against the slow burn trope. Not because I thought it was shit; it's just, I usually don't have the patience to wait whatever-amount-superior-to-three damn chapters for my dear ship to finally be able to look at each other without blushing and/or hold hands. Thus why you often times see me reading oneshots or fics with the "Established Relationship" tag on them.

So you can imagine just how surprised—or maybe not, maybe I just didn't think enough about it—I was when I realized my newest fixation's main pairing is—canonically—the embodiment of slow burn. Because holy shit they're taking their time.

Nothing against how Kusuriya develops its love story—quite the opposite, actually. The relationship between Jinshi and Maomao, two characters that are written as beautifully as their romance, is a rather realistic approach as to how the same or a similar dynamic would developed in real life. In such a complicated situation, with such complex feelings about emotions—both external and their own—and attachment, makes sense that it takes so long for the relationship to finally sail.

The problem is, I didn't know I was signing with the Devil the moment I decided to pick up the light novel. Ten volumes and nothing has happened. Nothing.

And you can say that technically things have happened, because they have. I mean, Jinshi is just so desperate for Maomao to give him the time of day, you know what I mean? And even that isn't enough anymore and thus he has committed some of the craziest shit I've seen in any romance. Which okay, I don't usually read these type of romances but still.

What I mean by "nothing" is just, their relationship hasn't changed status. I could also say that it seems to go nowhere, but that'd be lying. Since, you know, it has changed quite a lot—just not in the way my impatient ass wanted it to. Because he can be as honest with his feelings as he pleases, and those around them might be heavely conscious of the tension and thus constantly tease those lovebirds (as they should), but babygirl's not helping, you know?

And I get it, Maomao's not the best at expressing and understanding herself, and she's also way too busy worrying about going as unnoticed as possible (she should give up on that one already, tbh) while keeping her head where it should be. But like, I can't help feeling frustrated over it like ‼‼

GIRL, FUCK THE RULES. TAKE THAT PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A MAN AND RUNAWAY SOMEWHERE NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY YOU. YOU THEN CARRY THAT BITCH BRIDESTYLE TO THE CLOSEST CHURCH AND MAKE HIM YOUR WIFE. PROCEED TO FROG AROUND, EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR UTERUS AS MUCH AS YOU'D LIKE, AND THEN TEACH THE PRODUCTS OF YOUR PRACTICES AS YOUR OWN GUINEA PIG THE WAYS OF HERBAL MEDICINE. AS EASY AS THAT.

But she won't. She'll take her sweet ass time being in denial about both Jinshi's and her own feelings, then maybe she'll proceed to analize herself and find out that maybe, just maybe, that affection that she'd been feeling for that loser became something else. Did said affection also become something more complicated? Absolutely. Does she know how to deal with it? Hell no, but fuck it. If I learned something from school is that you always leave the hardest parts for later.

Now you see why I was so against reading slow burn?

And you wanna know the worst part? I loved it—I loved every second of it, every word, every page. Every scene that seemed to help the relationship advance, only for Maomao to say nope and leave like she owns the place, which at this point she fucking might.

It feels like I, as the reader, am in the middle of a heatwave and some sadistic bastard won't stop teasing me with ice cream—they put it in front of my face, close enough that I can smell the cold. Then take a spoon and eat little by little while staring directly to my eyes. At times they seem to show mercy and feed me a spoon, only for it to be a rather small quantity of serving—serving that tastes so damn good at first, only for it to have such a bitter aftertaste. But if I gotta have something in common with Jinshi is that I'll never be able to beat the masochist allegations, so I'll wait patiently for the next spoon and its corresponding and seemingly enless teasing from that faceless being.

So yeah, I'm still against it, only that now I understand the appeal—even if I have yet to find out about the whereabouts of my sanity while still mananing with the little I've left.

#kusuriya no hitorigoto #the apothecary diaries #jinmao #mai.txt #long post #rant #?#did i just write a rant about a realisticly slow burning romance? yes #please understand i've no one to complain to about them #so i better let go these feelings before i explode and throw my pc out of the window or something #i tried being as spoiler free as possible but please tell me if i should change anything about... whatever this is

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public-trans-it · 7 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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leverage-ot3 · 18 days

Text

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to repare fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it