ay mates lelkins here

today i forgot to post what i actually wanted, so here's another thing i wanted to post. this kinda counts as art but eh

EDIT: i forgot to mention, i use a modpack for this https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=RSLuGK0yHrw it adds optifine, a few extra things and even some tweaks for some annoying stuff. pretty good, can't play without it

i've been playing minecrap for many months, this is my world that i made back in the last few months of uni iirc? i forgot. it's almost a year old too. a few cool builds.

here's the temple of amy along with the recently made lelkins statue. yes, the amy build is based on the "temple of notch" thing from fvdisco. if you wanna know who amy is, she's one of my ocs (look at this post)

i have discovered a few redstone things like sethbling's random pulse generator and a rendition of etho's daylight sensor and i incorporated it to this build. ooh, and i added my favorite optical illusion too.

those things make amy blink and even sleep and i find it really really cool (had to wait for her to wake up just to take this picture. say hi!)

i have a beach-like zone location with a donut shop that was based on a childhood one i used to go to

meldora's residence (based on a 1.20 base i made a few months ago) along with a factory that generates sand and gravel. yes, another one of my ocs. i forgot to post that on lemmygrad at the time, sorry

as you can see, i have a small railway because you can only walk in this version, pretty cool for all the train fans out there

a small shot of one of the references in the "reference desert" where i built the sonic 3 angel island, the aether portal, a recreation of the first ever mario pixel art documented in the history of minecraft and two shitty little memes.

the CREATOR MUSHROOM has cursed us with VILLAGE MUSHROOM. i recreated some of it, who forgets iconic characters such as OLDFATHER MUSHROOM, GARDENER MUSHROOM and TINKER MUSHROOM? i kinda do!

rate limit is fucking me over so i can't send more than a few images in a few minutes. just wait a little bit cause i have so much to show... like this bar i made!

or an island dedicated to a reference to weird al, which also has a fish ship!

(the island is named after a vinesauce joel reference)

i am so sorry that the experience is not good i really wish i can show everything but i still hope you all enjoyed this :D

when i found out about Hey Ash Watcha Playing, long after its peak, i got a bit interested into anthony burch. investigating i found out he wrote a book about metal gear solid 1. i didn't read that book (at least not about a few years later), but the publishers have a series where a writer talks about a game. most of these covers are a white background with an object that represents the video game in question. browsing through them, i spot one that caught my attention. no object, nothing symbolic, but poetic. the cover was a close up of a mossy green, in your mind expanding as an immense grassland. it was a book about Shadow of the Collosus

i stopped caring about anthony burch there, and not even knowing nick suttner, the one that wrote this book was, i began the journey that was imposed to me by chance. it does not contain some extraordinary analysis that you've never considered, it does covers a lot of details about production and how it was thought and why. It is a love letter to the game and what it represents to him most importantly.

thanks to this book, i found this film, which is the best adam sandler has offered. suttner mentions how many video games take inspiration from cinema, either for the cut scenes, references, general themes, and that while most of the time it is done poorly, there are great examples that do (i'm not going to give examples, but trust me, there are)

the same does not apply in reverse. video games permeation into cinema is not only rare, but almost non existent. it mostly focuses on what corporate thinks video games are and how it is related to numbers on excel sheets with dollar signs. or uwe boll.

arguably it is very hard to adapt a verb focused media to one that is executed through images and audio without user input and it is a predetermined, immutable experience. something along the lines on what roger ebert mentions (with a dull mind) about why video games will never be art.

and here it is this film.

maybe the only film, a film with fucking adam sandler, pulling a prosaic poetic interpolation between one of the most sacred video games in history and the main character' story

wander's story is a tragic one of giving everything for your loved one. about self destruction and birth. and futility. it is about an insurmountable task that takes the shape of gigantic mythical creatures where with each stab, you lose yourself, and with it, the prospect of a future that perhaps may have been better. silent, almost wordless.

if you want to experience a happy ending, stop playing, leave wander be ossified and unremembered in the forgotten lands, like ancient texts lost during wars that will never be read again.

and reign over me appears, hollywood cast, a silly, melodramatic story, and nothing outstanding.

dr. charlie fineman is a man who has lost family, but has money, so he spends his days doing not much contact with the humans in the planet, but consuming media, until his college friend dr. alan johnson bumps into him.

fineman is severely depressed and some other stuff, too, but for some reason they end up in his house where he is playing this game. it sounds silly, it's just a minute maximum of screen time in the whole film. yet here it is, the best we've got about video games in cinema

while in ueda's work the colossi represent an almighty task with curse borne consequences that should never be challenged, mike binder uses the colossi as metaphorical manifestations of one owns struggles.

it's as simple as that, and it's not even much, but when we've got so little, it looks so much that it fills our hearts.

this film made me think of a friend, who's mostly a cinephile and has watched probably 3 times more films than i did. he seems to have a technical eye and a trained brain for scripts that could almost dissect visual arts into a taxonomy and provide a mathematical solution for rating films.

today i choose to not to, and rate this film based on what it means to me, my loved ones, and what i felt, even knowing all the horrible shortcomings. thanks for doing this, it's really hard for me to cry, and you got exactly two tears out of my eyes while watching it, because it resonates so well with me, or because of the game, or what the fuck do i know.

in a way, this review goes for the people i've disappointed, and the colossi i still need to defeat to make things right, and hopefully none more should be slain to achieve whatever we aim for in life.

Ocarina of Time remake incoming (and probably by extension a Majora's Mask remake).

They're probably going to somehow tie it to BOTW and TOTK by retconing some stuff. Nobody @ me, but I totally see that happening. Rauru will transform into his TOTK self in the Temple of Light, if they decide to put that scrapped temple in there.

Your thoughts?

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

But yes, Nintendo is teasing a Zelda / LEGO collaboration and I suspect that this is just part of a marketing campaign for the new rumored (but not confirmed!) Ocarina of Time remake.

Oh God

Just make a The Legend of Zelda game that's a sequel to both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Nintendo! Do it, you cowards!

Just making this post to invite people to play PoE together, I am by no means a pro but I do understand the fundamentals of the game and can help people get started, I also have a guild to for us to help each other, and since the new season starts halloween it would be a good time to get into it. So if anyone wants play together hit me up

If anyone does it would be fun to trade or even battle sometime.

Okay, so I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, of it should be on Freechat or some other place, but being a gamer who has lately been somewhat conflicted between the need to

touch grass

As alluded to by the guys at TheDeprogram Podcast on their episode titled Touch Grass

, which ironically means just have fun playing videogames, and not just focusing on being a socialist 24/7 and all the things one is missing by not reading enough theory, or not organizing, or not working, or blablablablabla...

But I'd always love to see some sort of marxist analysis of programming, and software, and ofc...videogames! And so this is just an article by Jacobin Magazine, which summarizes the contents of the book

(which I've not read)

But looks intresting given what the article says

Marx at the Arcade.

And I thought it would be the perfect thing to share here in Lemmygrad. Hope I'm not mistaken posting this here.

Disclaimer: I am a cis man

The past two months saw the release of two highly anticipated indie sequels: Silksong and then Hades II

I loved that Silksong took "female protagonist" a bit further and 70-80% of the prominent characters were female. Hornet of course, Shakra, the Forge Daughter, the Architect (I think), Pinstress, Seamstress, the final boss, the real final boss, etc. It was refreshing to see.

Hades II is not as heavily dominated by women. That is not to say it is any less chicks rock. Since the game is extremely queer and there is a lot more room for nuance given the exposition-heavy nature of the narrative, it doesn't need to rely on the gender ratio as much. But most of the prominent characters are still women from what I can recall.

And of course, not to mention that both games also have great gameplay to back the themes. These are easily the two best games of this year.

Your thoughts?

Remember when games were actually fun? I often say that. And I think one aspect of fun is when a game doesn't try to distract you with bullshit all the time.

Elin is like that, but it's also not just that. It's a deep game, but its mechanics never get in the way of what I actually want to do.

Elin feels like an MMORPG, but it's single-player. If you knew games like Maple Story, Ragnarok Online, possibly even Runescape old-school back in the day, it looks kinda like that. I think it all comes from Ultima? In any case, it kind of follows the top-down isometric CRPG/dungeon-crawler view, which I think is great to help you fill in the blanks with your imagination.

It's a game that embraces its weirdness and nonsensical logic. Animals talk and can perform jobs around your settlement. Everything in this world, including people and puppies, is born from eggs apparently. You can eat the eggs and they might provide bonuses.. well, you might not want to eat the human eggs. You can make a sword out of grass, or food. The tourist you just met will open with "I wish all humans would die". You can harvest tomatoes that are "larger-than-man" sized. Who knows what else I haven't even encountered yet. I just learned you have to look at traits when eating food because they give you EXP. One of the starting "pets" you can have is a dog, a cat, or a little girl. You want the little girl because she's a strong tank at the beginning.

It's not so much the weirdness that I love about this game, but what it promises. It's definitely not a game that's "wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle" - it's the full ocean, period. A lot of top-down dungeon-crawlers promise to be deep, but aren't really. You quickly get the hang of their mechanics and past the gimmick, you realize it's actually not that complicated or you don't have a lot to discover. Elin is not like that.

I think the philosophy is best summed up as "anything can be anything." I sometimes pick up bows made out of processed foods. They're not great, but in a bind you can eat them.

You start by selecting a race and class. I picked Pianist because you can do music, but to be honest I'd recommend a more combat-focused class. You can learn everything anyway. Then you are thrown into a meadow, where you learn you are now the proud owner of this parcel (or you can pick a cave start too, but I haven't really tried that one). Congratulations, you also have to pay taxes now.

Wait, taxes? I thought I was going adventuring.

But this also means you will have to make money on the settlement if you want any chance to pay these taxes. It's not a "you have insurmountable debt" game though like Recettear was, it's just one more feature on top of the dungeon-crawling, the crafting, the skills learning, etc. There's a full settlement system where NPCs perform jobs, tourists pay you money, you have a shipping box to sell items and get gold bars from, which is one of the many currencies you can have. I'm pretty sure if I were to mine gold, I could then make my own gold bars instead of being dependent on the shipping box, but don't quote me on that. It's just a gut feeling because in this game everything somehow makes sense.

The game has a skill for everything, and experience is directly tied to these skills. You will level lockpicking by picking locks. You will level dual wielding by dual wielding weapons, etc. It's a bit grindy at times, but with the proper bonuses and patience it grows by itself.

Oh, and for once it's not a roguelike. Death during the first 90 days doesn't provide maluses so you can experiment, and after 90 days you will lose I think half your money (you can get it back) and possibly items? I don't know, I had a cursed guitar that made my performances better in my inventory and suddenly it disappeared. My cape protects me from thieves so I don't think it was them. I had to get a lute and learn how to play it instead :( I've had that guitar since day 1 since I picked it up on the floor of a dungeon.

I've been playing for a LOT of hours and I'm only still doing level 3-4 dungeons at best. I routinely see dungeons level 24 or more. I'm probably missing something to get stronger which ties in to what I said earlier - while the start is easy enough, the game promises a lot more beyond the surface that you feel like you just have to find. Or you can consult the wiki.

Meanwhile, the tremors are getting closer each time and I'm starting to mutate because of the Ether disease...

It also has modern amenities, like being able to configure chests very deeply. The game never tells you about this, but there's a wrench icon on every container inventory that allows you to configure how they behave as storage.

My only issue is time goes by really fast, especially on the world map. It feels like it's always night time (with reduced vision, don't forget to equip a torch), and I'm already past my second winter.

There are nightly builds, with new stuff added every day, which is great to see. Just yesterday two new plants were added to the game.

If you want to get it it's on steam but unfortunately it has never been discounted. You can also yarrr it but because of the nightly builds honestly take the plunge.

re-publicado de: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9432191

If you haven't tried it already, I recommend it, this demo was super cool!

The game is absolutely gorgeous and I was hooked from the start. There was an issue with my controller inputs, but a option in the settings fixed it. And honestly, the game is super fun. I didn't fully grasp the combat since I was forgetting to use some of the combos I unlocked, but I liked the way it is done with attack delaying for new combo routes.

I also thought the story is interesting with the whole invasion and gods are now silent thing. I want to see how it develops.

I've found out about the game from this video by brasilian youtuber tvPH. I have CrossCode on my library tho I haven't played it yet, but playing this demo made me want to play that now since it's from the same studio. Here's the game on Steam.

Also, the spirit capybara is cuuute!

These are the ones i follow

https://www.youtube.com/@JacobGeller https://www.youtube.com/@Accursed_Farms https://www.youtube.com/@DayoScript (Spanish) https://www.youtube.com/@ErrantSignal https://www.youtube.com/@Civvie11 https://www.youtube.com/@insertcreditshow https://www.youtube.com/@ActionButton https://www.youtube.com/@PixelaDay

This is it. My ultimate review. You knew it was coming eventually.

Is there anyone who hasn't played Ace Attorney though? I have to imagine there's always someone.

I've been playing the Ace Attorney series (or Phoenix Wright in Europe) for decades. I remember trying it on an NDS emulator way back in 2005 when I could barely get 5fps on it.

When I say decades, I mean decades. It's a trilogy I come back to every 2 or 3 years - it's the perfect wind-down games that you can play while falling asleep because it only moves when you do.

Ace Attorney is a visual novel at heart. It took me years to realize, but that's why once I did I started looking for more visual novels in this style. I realized I didn't dislike visual novels necessarily, I just needed the right ones in the right conditions.

When I say Ace Attorney, I mean the original trilogy: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations.

In my opinion, the original trilogy is meant to be played as one game. It's not that each game builds off the last (though they do follow a precise timeline over a few years) - in fact, each game is separated into 4 different cases that have little connection to one another, except through Phoenix, the titular lawyer, and the prosecutor for the game.

But the reason you play through all of it is for the fifth case in Trials and Tribulations. The one that ties everything together between the prosecutors and Phoenix's own past. The entire trilogy is very good, but what you really look forward to is that fifth case. It's full of plot twists following the short-mid-long formula, as I call it. Give readers short-term problems, mid-term answers, long-term plot twists. Things that you thought you figured out get recontextualized with a twist, and then twisted further at the end. Stuff that you already solved and moved on from comes back in a different way, or only fully makes sense later.

What's funny is every time I replay the trilogy I think differently of it. Years ago I thought the twist in the last case was incredible. Then I replayed the games at the beginning of this year and thought it was good, but not amazing or anything. I think it means different things depending on which era of your life you play it. With that said due to my latest playthrough, I think ever17, Virtue's Last Reward, and Paranormasight's twists are better.

But this last case, case 5 on game 3, is still incredible. It's a very nice farewell to the trilogy, the ending that ties everything together and a way for Capcom to thank the players for sticking with them for so long. The only drawback is that it introduces pivotal characters only for this case or game, so the effect is kinda lessened because you didn't grow with them over several games. You do get to know these new characters and appreciate them, but I can't help but think how much cooler it might have been if they had made an appearance in other games, even briefly. I don't want to spoil it but it's basically about Phoenix's past even though you never, ever heard about it before in any of the games. So it's kinda dumped on you as "this is how it is now".

What is Phoenix Wright even about anyway? He's a fledgling lawyer in the first game, barely 24 and bumbling his way to victory. But, he never gives up, no matter how bad things get for his client. And he always seeks the truth, no matter where it might take him. And in the end, against all odds, he makes it out.

You can clearly tell they got more comfortable writing Ace Attorney games as time went on. The first game is shockingly short, though it can be explained by needing to get people acquainted with the mechanics. I think we all thought we were gonna need to learn law to play it at first lol. It's a visual novel where you progress by presenting the right evidence on the right statement, so two conditions. There's no alternative routes or endings, it's pretty straightforward. As they got more comfortable they started making the games harder and introducing new mechanics. The second game was kinda weaker for using not only evidence but profiles - meaning you can present either a piece of evidence, or a character profile on a statement. It makes the game needlessly harder and they correctly removed it for the third game.

These stories live and die on their characters, and everyone in Phoenix Wright is larger-than-life in their own way. At its core it's drama between Phoenix and the prosecutors. The first game is actually pretty down-to-earth and, like I said, absurdly short. I think the third game is about as long as 1 and 2 combined, or at least it feels like it. The characters get progressively more outlandish as time goes on, but it works. Except for the circus case, I hated everyone there and the music too lol.

It's a VN with gameplay, what can I say. you investigate the area of the crime and because this is Japan, everybody hates defense lawyers and nobody will help you. Then you get into the courtroom with a half-baked case you didn't have enough time to prepare for, while the prosecutor has an airtight confession you didn't hear about. Everything is stacked against you, but you still manage to carefully pick apart witness statements until you somehow stumble upon the truth. The real truth. Every one of the 4 cases in each game is different, introducing different characters and a different murder, and every case has its unlikely ending.

It's solid gameplay but it does get a bit stale after a while. They started to introduce new mechanics to vary it up but nothing major before the Apollo trilogy. If you're stuck on something, you're stuck. You won't progress until you find the right combination. But it's alright, just take a break and come back when you feel refreshed.

I guess we need to get into the Apollo Trilogy now.

So game 3 was the farewell to Phoenix, the fledgling lawyer full of piss and vinegar we came to know and love. The trilogy was released between 2001 and 2004 - we only came to know it in the west on the Nintendo DS in 2004 or 5, but it originally came out on the GBA in Japan. It was only in 2007 that Capcom published the first Apollo Justice game, still using a 2D engine but native to the DS this time.

The first Apollo Justice game was perfectly fine. I found it a bit too 'out there' for me, like it was trying to emulate the spirit of the original trilogy but didn't quite get it. The prosecutor was just boring, he's a german playboy who also plays in a rock band and moonlights as a prosecutor in his off time, yawn. Even at 16 I didn't really find it interesting. The game introduced a mechanic during court battles where Apollo can tell the witness is lying and you have to move over a closeup of their sprite while they talk to find the micro gesture that gives it away. This is what I said by the normal gameplay gets stale and they want to freshen it up. But this is less puzzle and more reflex gameplay. I don't know, I didn't really find it engaging.

It's still a good entry, though many people didn't like what they did to Phoenix. What do you mean he left the job? What do you mean he's a pianist? He has a daughter and she's a magician?? Stop!!

I think many of us would have just wanted more Phoenix adventures, and Apollo is not different enough from Phoenix to warrant being a main character imo. They even look similar, and Phoenix barely makes an appearance.

But that was that for a long while, and the future of the series seemed uncertain. After 2007, Capcom published Miles Edgeworth Investigations 1 and 2 only in Japan. They've released an official english port in 2024 but the crafty ones knew how to get a rom and the english patches. They're solid games, they play differently. 1 is just okay, 2 is much better - but you have to play both to get it.

Then they also made a Prof Layton crossover in that time and Phoenix just looks weird in 3D - unfortunately, they'll use this model for the next 2 canon games. It was also a solid game, though it was kinda unfit for Phoenix and focused more on Layton and Luke. It introduced the five witness thing, where you question 5 witness at once instead of just one. Again, kind of adding gimmicks and seeing what sticks. It was still fine, it's just not one I readily come back to playing.

It was only in 2014 that we were graced with a new main series game, Dual Destinies. And... thanks but you can take it back ._.

I tried playing Dual Destinies earlier this year after I finished the trilogy. I couldn't do it. I really couldn't. And apparently it wasn't the first time I gave up, because I saw there was a mid-game save in my 3ds from years ago.

Where to begin? It introduces another MC, Athena Cykes. I like her, at least she's different enough from Apollo and Phoenix, but it's kinda just too much. You play Athena and Apollo is your sidekick, then Phoenix is there (with his horrible 3d model) to help out at times, then there's an anime cutscene where Apollo is wearing bandages while looking wistfully at a bombed courtoom. What are we even doing here? Literally just give us more Phoenix that's all we want 😭

It's a mess. you have the Apollo microgesture mechanic, and Athena has a widget that allows her to calm other people's emotions. I still don't really get how that works. So if they're 'happy' during a witness statement when they should be scared you can point to the contradiction, I think. Like I said, just adding gimmicks so it varies gameplay a bit but it's just getting to be too much.

The story was so bad. So it's the dark age of the law or something, but it's never really explained what that means or how it impacts your cases. they also did it in game 2 already. Someone detonates a bomb in a courtroom, so now there's terrorism in the ace attorney series when before you defended a children's show star or a famous cat burglar. The second case is about a yokai in a rural village and idk, they tried to do something scary? It's just very topical to Japan. The third case is when I gave up, it takes place in a school that makes judges prosecutors and defense lawyers lol. you know, instead of studying law and then choosing a path or becoming a judge after years of practice, you can just go to trade school for it at 17. The prosecutor is not interesting. His whole thing is he plays 'mind games' with the judge when you just want to move on. Godot had a cool laser mask and a jazz soundtrack. There's no competition.

And it's long. And pointless. I stopped when I realized I didn't really care about any of what was happening. I wasn't invested. The terrible 3d models didn't help.

But then something peculiar happened. Capcom made The Great Ace Attorney.

I say peculiar because the first one came out a year before Spirit of Justice, the last of the Apollo Justice trilogy. It took years to get it in the rest of the world - a fan translation project was in the works in the late 2010s and only got the first game, and most of the second game, out before Capcom decided to release all the Ace Attorney games and spinoffs to the rest of the world. You can even get them on Steam now.

The Great Ace Attorney starts in Meiji era Japan (so 1870s or so), though most of it takes place in London with an ancestor to Phoenix. Sherlock Holmes is in it.

It was amazing. The models looked much better - it's a theater play. It's much more focused on the story, and it's long. Very long. I started playing the two games back to back early in the year and it took me months to finish them. By that time it was already late spring. They're not even particularly difficult games, they're just that long to read through.

The only downside I would say is they should be played back-to-back, because the first game ends with cliffhangers and more questions than answers, and the second picks up right where we left off. They are one big game, but thankfully now that they exist in a bundle you don't have to wait 4 years to get the conclusion to the story.

The characters are endearing again. They're fun. Sherlock Holmes is as much of a fool (affectionate) as Phoenix and Naruhodou (the ancestor) are, they pair well together. The ending though is, I mean, there's not really any twists or anything. Actually the second half of the second game is full of twists in rows, but it was also kinda predictable and idk, it didn't hit me as hard as the first trilogy did. But they did fix what I said about the original trilogy's twist: in GAA, you are introduced to all the characters over the two games, it's really a one-shot story. Even people that don't seem connected at first have their role to play (when we met miss Tusspells I thought wait, what is she doing here? Why are we investigating this? but it pays off and makes sense).

The story structure is really interesting. In the original trilogy, the cases start with a murder and you being introduced to your client right away. In GAA, there's more breathing room before the case actually starts. And even when it starts there's some "side quest" that take you away from the investigation. Even when a theft happens and you think that's gonna be the case, no, it's not. It really takes its time more, which is enjoyable. You end up with a LOT of evidence in your folder, more than in any other game combined.

I don't necessarily wish for more GAA games because I think they basically told the story, though I loved Susato's character and I would totally play a game focused on her, but if they finally made a new ace attorney game, I just want Phoenix back where we left him off in Trials and Tribulations with what they learned from GAA. Pretend the whole AJ timeline was just a dream or something. Alas, with how many games there have been and how long it's been since the last one (almost ten years), I'm not sure we'll ever get that.

You still have months of games ahead of you if it's your first time playing the series.

If you want to play the games:

1. Original trilogy: either Nds or 3DS trilogy. You can easily mod a 3DS now that it's stopped receiving updates. There's the trilogy bundle on steam or Switch too. Don't play Game 1 Case 5 straight away. I hate that they did that. They added that case for the bundle, and it's good, but it's also super difficult if it's your first time playing and bridges the gap between game 3 and 4. It introduces Ema Skye for example, who is going to be the detective in Apollo Justice. I would say finish the trilogy first and then play case 5. They should have added a warning for new players.
2. Apollo Justice trilogy: The first AJ game came out on nds with a 3ds port in 2017, the others on 3ds. So you're probably better off with the PC or switch bundle (I think it came out on the switch?). you don't have to play them to enjoy the rest spinoffs though.
3. Miles Edgeworth Investigations: both on NDS, with an english patch. It's been out there on the internet for years. Or, you guessed it, the official bundle translation. Oh, you will need the microphone at some points so emulation might soft-lock you (my 3ds emulator, Citra, never recognized microphone on my phone, so I modded my 3ds).
4. Layton Crossover: 3DS only as far as I'm aware. Came out in English officially.
5. Great Ace Attorney: originally for 3ds. There's a fan translation for the first game but they didn't finish the second since the official version came out. So it's Switch or PC version for the second game. They changed Sherlock Holmes to Herlock Sholmes for the english because of copyright. It... kinda works, I guess. It's pretty important to the story that Sherlock Holmes actually exists but sure.

There are iOS and Android ports as well but I can't say if they'll work on modern devices. You're better off saving your money there.

Reminder that I made a switch emulation guide in another post. On my snapdragon 8gb device Great Ace Attorney worked perfectly, though I had to be careful of overheating.

This is a midgame review as I've done before. I try not to write them because it forces me to finish the game, but I have to start with the elephant in the room: I'm not sure I want to finish this game?

Famicom Detective Club is an old series from Nintendo - as the name implies, the games originally came out on the Famicom, the Japanese NES, and didn't make their way to the rest of the world until the 2021 remasters that gave them a full makeover for the Switch. The first two games, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, came out in a bundle, and were followed in 2023 by a new title, Emio the Smiling Man.

It's an absolutely beautiful remake. The picture attached (from Emio) doesn't do it justice - you need to see this animated. To me this is really the next stage of visual novel graphics. A lot of work clearly went into this, especially with how many different scenes there are (sometimes the camera even switches in a scene, showing a different perspective just for the sake of it. They didn't have to go that far!)

Unfortunately, beyond the surface, you are quickly confronted with an adversarial game.

I bought the bundle when the remakes came out, and already felt the stories were a bit... retro? Nintendoesque? The Missing Heir really wasn't anything to write home about. The game wasn't too long (as expected as it was a NES game and a cartridge back then was like 48kb of space) and the twist was long predictable. I mean, the heir is missing and you wake up with amnesia at the bottom of a cliff. I followed it up with the Girl who Stands Behind and to be honest I don't remember any of it lol, I'll have to play it again. Or maybe I never did - I have it on my switch but I legit do not remember anything about it.

The Girl Who Stands Behind though marks the DNA of the series. From then on, the games started to follow the "urban legend comes true" formula. TGWSB starts with a (fictional) urban legend about a girl who stands behind you in the school corridors and kills you or something. For context, Emio also seems to take place right after the other 3 games (there were 4 games in total before Emio, but only 2 have been translated to English. One was on satellaview and hasn't been preserved) so it's set in the 1980s with the same protags as the previous games.

Emio continues the formula with a fictional urban legend about a man wearing a paper bag with a smiling face drawn on it. He is called Emio by the children for the initials of Smiling Man in Japanese. He finds crying girls and asks them if they want to stop being sad. If you say yes, he kills you and puts a paper bag on your head with a smiling face drawn on it. I don't know, I just don't think fictional urban legends are interesting. The point of an urban legend is that you don't know if it's real or not. A fictional urban legend is obviously not real. It also lacks the memetic factor where it morphs or gets fleshed out with time, instead it all comes from a writer who simulates a legend from their room.

I had higher hopes seeing that Emio had been developed in the 2020s. Instead, it seems to want to follow the formula to a T. The themes are certainly darker - the missing heir was kinda "childish" not as a pejorative, but moreso that it really felt like I was playing detective instead of being a serious investigator. You're 17! What are you doing investigating a murder! You have math class!

Emio though puts you right in the action with the discovery of a dead 15 year old boy in the first minutes of the game. This is where the game started to irk me. I thought, does he need to be 15? Does this story need to happen with children? I'm not against exploring these themes completely, just that I didn't really trust Nintendo to handle it appropriately. That's not exactly their area of expertise. My suspicions started to mount even more when they introduced a character that's suspiciously silent on a missing girl, a student at his school. I thought that's a red herring for sure, it's too big. They want you to think he's a predator, and I didn't really like that either. Again, it needs to be handled carefully. This guy digs a deeper grave for himself every time he's asked about the girl when the only question the detectives need to ask is "stop playing around, you realize this is making you the prime suspect, now tell me what happened between you and this girl?" I'm not at the reveal yet but I'm sure it's something mundane like he was harsh to her but didn't intend to. He's the "loud guy who cares a whole lot" trope.

In terms of gameplay, the game also started to lose my interest. It's come to a point where I don't really want to play more. I don't trust Nintendo to give me a satisfying story (the whole "oooh urban legend comes to liiiiife" bit is really not doing it for me sorry, at least use a real urban legend for it like bigfoot or something). The gameplay takes place through a menu - reminiscent of Portopia again; after all, both series started out in the same era. Except Detective Club has no puzzles or thinking involved.

So it gets me asking, do you really need gameplay? I would have been fine with it as a kinetic VN with just text. That's what it is at its core and in fact it would have been more expeditive. You find yourself going through menus over and over again because you only get like 3-4 lines of dialogue upon clicking the right button. So you have to click it again and again to get the full dialogue, until the character has nothing new to say, then use Think to know what to do next, then click some buttons again and again. Oftentimes you have to Ask->Think->Ask, which is why Think is not a hint system but an integral part of the game. There's no deducing involved or puzzle solving, just tap Think to know what to do next. A kinetic VN would have removed that artificial brake.

Speaking of, there's too many protags. You have MC-kun, whom you name (so I'm not sure if he's the same MC in the remasters, legit don't remember), Ayumi, who is a staple of the series, and Utsugi, the detective agency owner - but he's conveniently always on a business trip somewhere. Again, it feels like they haven't really left the 1980s mystery game design school despite over 40 years experience gained since then. Emio was the same writer as the original games! He's still at Nintendo! Periodically, you come back to the detective agency and have to answer a quiz on the facts of the case so far, except you can't really fail it. This reminds me of Jake Hunter, a terrible detective series also from the 80s, so I have to assume the quizzes that made sure you were paying attention were commonplace back in the day. But this is a 2023 game!

You switch between Ayumi and the MC but it's not really a perspective switch, since they always meet up later to discuss what they each learned, thereby repeating what you just played through. It also seems like everything happens to them, a pitfall I wrote about before. They don't really investigate so much as people tell them stuff. If you want a real character-driven story, play Dynasty Warriors: Origins. It's literally a retelling of Romance of the Three Kingdoms but there you go, that story structure was perfected 600 years ago already.

In terms of other characters they're kind of caricatures. It's expected and even useful to exaggerate their traits a bit but they're all kind of "too much". I can't help but think obviously one of them is hiding their true motives and this will be the big reveal. "You thought I was the calm quiet one, but I'm actually the killer hahaha" or if not the calm one, then the energetic go-getter. It's just too obvious.

The games are also very linear, another part of the Com Club formula. It's not like Ace Attorney where you have to move between locations and investigate hotspots; you are presented with a single screen (though again it looks gorgeous all the time) and have to use the right menu buttons on it, that's it.

All of this gameplay slows things down a lot. Some chapters really don't add much and I think the game could have been condensed more, probably. I'm only midway through, so maybe there's gonna be some funky perspective switch down the line or something.

It's come to a point I don't really care about being spoiled. Yes, it does remove part of the fun - being told "it was like this" just doesn't have the same impact as getting invested in the story - and this is why I wouldn't say too much about ever17 either in my review. I could give the plot twist away and what the story is really about, but then it wouldn't have the same impact to you as it did to me. You'd say "oh, okay". But it also feels like Emio does its best not to get me involved in the story. I mean the game gives you a cellphone and the first two times you have to use it to progress, it's out of battery. Can we focus?

(Paranormasight screenshot; you play in a first-person perspective and can look 360° around you).

Instead, I can't help but think Paranormasight did it much better - Square Enix finally made a good game again. I seriously loved that game. It has similar themes - it starts with the 7 urban legends of Honjo, a fictional town (I think?), except there's actually up to 15 legends, but the people refer to them as 7. It was also a VN. It takes places in the 80s. But wow, that game was great. In fact, I thought it was too short. The urban legends were actually real in that game, which I think elevates the story. That is, it wasn't "oh the supernatural is fake it was just a normal murder" (which why even have that dimension in your story then?), no, the game literally gives you the power of one of these legends at the beginning to tell you all of this is happening. It's also a superpower that basically lets you kill anyone, and so you think damn, if I have that power from the beginning, what else is out there that's even worse?

It's not that I like supernatural stuff particularly, it's that if done correctly it introduces a new dimension to your story. Famicom Club has the same roots, but no supernatural - this isn't a plot twist or anything, it's the formula. At the end of the day, it's a routine police case. Some feathers get ruffled and people move on.

Instantly the scope feels large in Paranormasight. You have a codex with info about the 7 mysteries (or more, remember) and you can't help but think you're gonna get to the bottom of it by the end of the game. But then other stuff happens outside of the 7 mysteries. So we have to solve that too. It feels lively.

Paranormasight also looks gorgeous, though the art direction is very different. It features a non-linear story through the eyes of various characters (narrator switching), unlocking chapters in a flowchart as you progress through each narrator's arc and perspective. And it makes you think to figure it out, especially the 7 mysteries of Honjo which are delivered through clues that you have to solve. It also has tragic stories with high school students, but it handles them with care - I was very happy with how they handled the subject matter in fact. It literally uses game mechanics as part of its storytelling. It recontextualises things you thought you knew in its own mini-twists.

Paranormasight also has SEVERAL protagonists, but they are different enough that you never get lost on who did what, they all have their connection to the events (what's the connection of ayumi and mc-kun aside from the fact their agency was hired to help investigate? Utsugi, the only one with some connection to the case, is almost never around), and they are mostly split into groups so that it's easier to keep track of. The game has a flowchart mechanic with each protag/group on a different line, and you can switch at any time. I never felt lost.

The flowchart mechanic can also be used greatly for pacing, like it did in Virtue's Last Reward. It can put a lock on the next chapter of the story to force you to go play another part, discovering important information before continuing. It feels less forced - Det Club switches you between MC and Ayumi's investigations linearly, and it feels like "why do I care about this meeting in a café I didn't even learn anything". But if you "choose" to play it so you can unlock the next of Ayumi's chapter after the café, then it becomes less grating.

The paranormal is not a stand-in for deus ex machina if you want to use it in a story; it's here to bring your down-to-earth parts of the story to a higher level and give them deeper meaning. Paranormasight is ultimately not about investigating the 7 mysteries of Honjo but about fixing the errors of the past. I don't trust Detective Club to achieve that because you are literally 19 year olds on the case of a dead teen. It's also not a game for children; the rating is M and it will traumatize children if they play it. So why are we playing as a kid? He would barely be old enough to play his own game!

I especially liked the prologue in paranormasight. I guess I'll put it in a spoiler

paranormasight prologue

It starts at night in an abandoned park and has some light horror elements to it (the game makes you literally turn around expecting to see a ghost there). The person you were there with suddenly dies gruesomely, you gain the power of the mystery of Honjo, and you kill every other protagonist. If you collect enough souls, then you can revive any person of your choice. This section serves as an introduction to everyone that's going to be important in the game and sets the tone for the rest of the game. The prologue ends with your death, and the real story begins: you get to choose which of the three perspectives you want to start with, all three people you briefly met in the prologue.

All good horror is about family drama at its core, or at least human conflict. My only complaint of Paranormasight is that it was too short - it's still a solid 12 hours, but I would have wanted 12 more.

Play Paranormasight.

As time goes one has to look at more and more niche games to find their fix.

Finishing up with the Portopia Case, I looked online for something else to grind my teeth on, and landed on the Painscreek Killings. A cold case mystery game that promises investigation, deducing, and puzzles -- and there are not many of these games. Another really good one in the genre is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I probably won't write a review on it, but I can recommend that one eyes closed (pun intended).

The Painscreek Killings is a bit older, coming out in 2017. So I'm almost 10 years too late. You begin only knowing two things: you've arrived in Painscreek, and Vivian Roberts died here. Your employer wants to know who killed her.

One reason I'm talking about it, aside from the fact that I want to popularize deduction games (they still don't really have a proper genre name!), is that it really reminded me of Portopia. It's open world and non-linear - something that I thought about often as I walked through the idyllic rural town of Painscreek. Seeing all the Japanese names in the credits I figured oh, there might be something there. Portopia is so famous in Japan it's unlikely there's people who haven't at least heard of it there.

It's open-world and non-linear from the start. You can explore the sheriff's cabin you spawn next to, or just head straight into town. You can even leave immediately, which ends the game with an email from your boss asking for the killer's name—a neat touch, though I accidentally triggered it and alt+F4'd to avoid spoilers.

So you walk around, taking in the sights and wondering where you'll even being, and then... she appears. Scary ghost lady.

There she is officer, she did it. Arrest her. I'm getting out of here.

Yeah, there's a ghost in this game. I could kinda tell from the atmosphere (love a good creepy atmosphere that only hints at things) but it's jarring, in a good way, to come out of a house and see this shadowy figure staring at you from across the river. It also changes the entire tone of the game.

I have to admit from this point on I got spoiled a little as I looked online to make sure there were no jumpscares lol. I will list the spoopy events in a spoiler at the end if you're like me but want to play the game.

The story relies heavily on diaries and documents, which eventually shift from letting you piece clues together to outright telling you "hi it was me i did it". This exposition dump makes the writing feel hamfisted. I've also always found these documents in games funny. Like when you think about it, everyone left town but conveniently left behind the diaries that incriminate them so you could piece the story together.

Due to this the game overstays its welcome a bit. The story is not particularly difficult to piece together - I got most of it by the midway point, but still had to keep going. The game repeats a lot of stuff you've already figured out (because it's non-linear and you need the clues).

So there is a walking sim aspect to it. The thing with non-linear storytelling is at some point you've gone as far as you can on a lead and have to look somewhere else. So you've done everything you could in one location, which means going to another location. You find a clue there and it brings you back to the location you were in before because it opens something up. See what I mean? You do a lot of back and forth the more you progress through the game. Like I said at some point I was ready to turn in. It wasn't a mystery anymore and I wanted info on other leads.

I had to pick up a walkthrough for a bit of it. It completely ruins the fun because you might just have missed a clue to know the solution to the code or where to find the key, but at the same time, you kinda have to pixel hunt. It's not as bad as in some games but for example I could not progress at some point because I forgot to check a drawer in a much earlier location. I would have never caught that by myself, there's literally dozens of places to go back to. The lightning engine is not great and you can definitely miss stuff because of it. There is also one puzzle that has a clue in the same room but wow, first of all you have to notice it, second of all you will have no idea how the two fit together.

Oh yeah, and take notes so you can keep track of things.

At the end, you can leave the town, or you can achieve the 'true' ending, and... guess I'll put it in spoiler?

true ending

The chase was just dumb lol. I knew it was coming because I looked it up. I liked the health bar popping up, the notice "You cannot save from now on" and how it was announced, with the sound of the door. But you're unbearably slow even when sprinting and obviously the killer is not any faster than you or you couldn't win. The ghost lady guides you but... badly. Instead of appearing and pointing the way left or right, she just appears in front of you. Okay thanks but where do I go after that? It was kinda long, though I won on the first try. The killer's model is kinda funny when you look at it. Looks like a 15yo hacker, with his black hoodie and jeans lol.

I would honestly prefer an ending where you just leave in your car and submit your story to your editor, and then there's an epilogue or something based on what you found out.

Despite what I'm saying, it's still a recommend from me. There are things that could have been improved, and I believe they did incorporate the feedback into their 2023 game Scene Investigators (notably that game lets you piece together the scene from just the clues), but it also does a lot of things right. For example I really liked how the town was laid out and that even some doors that could not be opened could still be interacted with. It gave a sense of scale. I liked the nonlinear attempt, even if it didn't hit the mark all the time. I liked the atmosphere as well. I liked that there was no time rush - I would have actually appreciated if your character could sit down on chairs while I was writing down my notes, just so it didn't feel like I was standing in the middle of the hallway with my notepad.

But in terms of lasting impact, I think I will forget about it soon. I'm still thinking about Ever17 and that was a week ago already. Feels longer.

And here are the sightings if you're a scaredy cat like me. I can't help it there's too much materialism in my body.

ghost lady sightings

As far as I can tell, the scary events are here:

1. When you come out of the burned down house, she will be on the other side of the bank.
2. When looking behind the grate in the mayor's mansion (the rusty gate behind the garden IIRC), she can appear once. I didn't see her in my playthrough.
3. When walking in front of the security room in the mayor's mansion, you can hear a knock or something falling? I didn't. I visited the mayor's mansion first so maybe that's why.
4. In the hospital when you pick up the keycard, the breaker will shut off and the lights will turn off until you can fix it. This is to prevent you from using the keycard right away, so it's a puzzle and not just an environmental thing.
5. She can also appear on the roof of the hospital but I didn't see her, so I'm not sure where exactly. Apparently from one of the sides.
6. At the end, in the attic, there is a voice recorder in a drawer. Once you turn it on, the murderer chases you. He's actually not so scary, it was kinda comical. The ghost lady guides you to safety.

Otherwise there is nothing scary. The hospital lights stay off for a long while but nothing will pop up or appear, not even in the creepy sewers.

Finally finished Portopia, which was apparently only 3 days from when I made my last post! So probably 4 days in total to beat it.

-> also if you don't read the manual, you can press B to switch to another menu with more actions. If you want the game, it's in my previous post about it.

Like I said in my first impressions, the game requires a lot of pixel hunting. I appreciate the non linear nature, letting you progress in different ways. There was an item I only found I'd done everything else I could by then, but you could also find it as your first action in the game. It's fun to think different people could progress differently and it works. Calling it open world is a bit of a stretch though, by that metric any game that has different screens is open world.

Some frustration is to be expected, because you might want to do one thing but the game expects you to play within its bounds. Also the item I mentioned has literally 0 clues as to how to get it - that's the pixel hunting part. I give the spoilers below because you literally won't progress until you find them. Once I did, a lot of the game became a breeze as you get into the logic of how it works.

The dialogue was endearing, kudos to the translation team for preserving the game's personality. Every character is distinct. Because of the size limitation of NES cartridges though the game is also pretty short; I breezed through the ending (no doubt helped by my use of a walkthrough but I also only needed it for 2 puzzles). The story does feel like more when you start; there's a murder, someone has disappeared, you learn of the potential suspects, but then once stuff falls into place you think, oh, was that it? But I do want more! Give me a bigger game!

I recommend the game, just don't expect too much. it's a NES game that fits on 48kb and 2kb of ram thanks to creative coding. The plot twist is a nice touch but it's not mind-blowing or anything, and ultimately it's a police case of a lender who died.

I can definitely see how it inspired the Japanese game dev scene though, with its larger-than-life characters, plot twist and complex mysteries (even if the game is ultimately short, it has more than one murder in it and 8 characters)

But honestly in this day and age if you get stuck on something too much, use a walkthrough. Life is too precious to spend aimlessly walking around.

There's also a 2023 tech demo free on steam but it uses NLP that doesn't work in english and you can only input the exact same commands that are in the NES version. It's supposed to parse language but it doesn't lol. It does point out the famous 3 items for you though apparently.

Would love a proper sequel to this game with modern tech. In a way it was kinda like playing the investigation portions of Ace Attorney but with more actions at my disposal.

items you need (walkthrough)

There is a tiny little hint to get these items, the manual says to investigate the crime scene carefully. But I don't know how you'd expect anyone to check these places specifically unless they run the magnifying glass on literally every pixel of the screen.

You need to find three items with the magnifying glass -> ring outside the mansion bottom right corner of door, lighter in living room bottom right corner under table, kouzou's picture in study crime scene, bottom right corner of drawer.

And some spoiler thoughts about the ending.

spoiler ending

As for Yasu being the real criminal there are some hints as well. When you find the other bodies he is very quick to want to close the case. When you find the diary he seems contemplative and makes a comment about the real killer finding it. It was kinda fun when I realized because he was with you since the beginning and he does look like Fumie, but it also falls out of nowhere. Why did he become a police officer? Why kill the guy now? When did Fumie start working with him, and did she know about the inheritance?

You're supposed to Take->Clothes 3 times at the police station after you find the diary. I knew of the interaction and actually did it once on Yasu and it didn't do anything. Would people really do it 3 times in a row when the first time is inconclusive? You'd just think oh it's not the right move.

The entire diary section itself was frustrating tbh. The maze was not so tough once you figure out the right way to go, though the safe and key is basically useless and a waste of time. I found the key by pure luck in the bookcase. The map is truthful but then once again you have to do something 3 times in a row with no indication that it's the right move the first time. Who would expect to bump into the wall instead of using the magnifying glass or hammer on it?

Aside from that it was an enjoyable experience for what it was

The summary of the video states:

---

After such a long time, I finally get to share my biggest project with you all.

Big enormous shoutout to ‪@ThaddeusSilva‬ for composing the track for this reveal, as well as the other tracks used in this video!

Tracks featured:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tXiZQnPcfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZbhbcScIA

Assuming you're reading this after watching the reveal, this is iiSU: a front-end / launcher founded by yours truly, with the same love and care you normally see in my video content. It was bound to happen eventually, and today marks the beginning of home launchers reaching new heights.

Front-end development is being led by none other than the legendary Huesos - prioritizing the dual-screen branch.

Huesos's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/SapphireRhodonite

Back-end development has also initiated and we have more ideas brewing now that a full passionate and talented team is formed.

This is by far the most ambitious thing I've ever done, not to mention this is my first time even designing an app, let alone develop one from scratch. I hope you're as excited as I am, because there's still so much to share in the future!

For those who want to join the Discord, here's the invite link for you!

https://discord.com/invite/5JkBtVqd

You can reach me there a lot quicker if you have any questions or want to take part in the development process.

I've also created a paypal link for those who want to support iiSU and gain a few perks in the process, like early access when the app reaches its beta phase. https://ko-fi.com/usagishade

Alright, that covers everything for now! I'll be seeing you a lot more often as I've got a lot of free time to pour into this.

Til next time!

---

So it boasts a cleaner UI and shows all your achievements. I think this is a ROM for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Like a tablet or phone launcher, I guess. Probably you can put this on a handheld PC as well (like a Steam Deck, maybe).

The app is developed for Android devices as well.

Your thoughts?

Maybe I missed something in the short video (which is two minutes long) but I'm not sure what this is exactly.

The summary of the video states:

---

After such a long time, I finally get to share my biggest project with you all.

Big enormous shoutout to ‪@ThaddeusSilva‬ for composing the track for this reveal, as well as the other tracks used in this video!

Tracks featured:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tXiZQnPcfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZbhbcScIA

Assuming you're reading this after watching the reveal, this is iiSU: a front-end / launcher founded by yours truly, with the same love and care you normally see in my video content. It was bound to happen eventually, and today marks the beginning of home launchers reaching new heights.

Front-end development is being led by none other than the legendary Huesos - prioritizing the dual-screen branch.

Huesos's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/SapphireRhodonite

Back-end development has also initiated and we have more ideas brewing now that a full passionate and talented team is formed.

This is by far the most ambitious thing I've ever done, not to mention this is my first time even designing an app, let alone develop one from scratch. I hope you're as excited as I am, because there's still so much to share in the future!

For those who want to join the Discord, here's the invite link for you!

https://discord.com/invite/5JkBtVqd

You can reach me there a lot quicker if you have any questions or want to take part in the development process.

I've also created a paypal link for those who want to support iiSU and gain a few perks in the process, like early access when the app reaches its beta phase. https://ko-fi.com/usagishade

Alright, that covers everything for now! I'll be seeing you a lot more often as I've got a lot of free time to pour into this.

Til next time!

---

So it boasts a cleaner UI and shows all your achievements. I think this is a ROM for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Like a tablet or phone launcher, I guess. Probably you can put this on a handheld PC as well (like a Steam Deck, maybe).

The app is developed for Android devices as well.

Your thoughts?

Maybe I missed something in the short video (which is two minutes long) but I'm not sure what this is exactly.

Look at this beauty of 1985 graphics. In 10 years this game will turn half a century old, which is just wild to think about.

I probably heard of the portopia serial murder cases (PSMC) a long time ago. But it only caught my attention yesterday, and I don't even remember how or where... is that part of the mystery?

The game originally only came out in Japan, and was so influential that it led to the development of Dragon Quest (when Enix saw less actiony games were viable on the famicom, as it sold 700,000 copies) and got hideo kojima into making video games. it also features some now-famous names on it.

The picture is from the famicom version. The game originally came out for pre-PC computers and used a parser system where you typed in keywords to do stuff - finding the right combination of words was considered part of the game which just sounds tedious. The computer version had slightly better graphics, honestly, it just looks cute here.

so what's PSMC?

It's a non-linear, open-world murder mystery game where you and your assistant detective solve the death of a loan shark. All you know is he was found dead in a locked room, clutching the bloody knife. The game was specifically praised for its non-linear open-world nature and its plot twists (and you know I love a good plot twist).

It looks downright primitive by today's standards which kinda calls into question the open world nature. I mean, sure, it's open world. But it's also just a menu you open and click a button on.

It was far from being the first adventure game created, but it was possibly the first one made in Japan - the creator cited the influence of US adventure games for developing it.

The famicom version uses a menu of actions instead of the parser, which probably makes for more streamlined gameplay, since you have everything in front of you.

I can't say too much about the game because I'm not far in yet, I'm actually stuck so I decided to distract myself by writing this. As expected from games for the time, they really don't guide you. I have some leads, I have my paper notes, and I still can't seem to progress in any direction lol. It's definitely the kind of game where you have to try every action in every location.

Despite this it plays pretty well, and it pulls you in with minimal graphics - there's not even sound effects or music, just the clickety typewriter sound when someone is talking (which does get grating I have to admit). There's also minimal dialogue but what's there is endearing and it doesn't prevent me from getting a clearer picture in my head of the facts of the case. The english patch is definitely top-notch.

Fun fact: the game didn't have a save system on either the computer or famicom version, so it encouraged you to keep paper notes of what you did so that you could quickly catch up next time you play. I'm going to make the executive decision to pretend I'm leaving my NES running 24/7. Although restarting seems to be a mechanic, as the manual says if you're stuck, you might want to restart and see if you missed something...

The famicom version also added a dungeon-crawling/maze section which was pretty novel at the time, but also kind of useless. I mean, there's only one place to go in it as far as I can tell. But it's alright, it's not so tortuous once you get the hang of it. I guess back in the day it looked impressive.

If you want to play it for yourself you can follow the fan patch instructions here on romhacking: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/764/, realize SnesTool doesn't work on 64-bit OSes, find a random rom patcher on google that works with Javascript (best find of the decade), or if you trust me to upload files I uploaded the patched rom here for lemmygrad: https://gofile.io/d/B5Ye62. You will also need virtuanes to play it, they recommend it as the emulator because the rom has been expanded to fit the english bytes on it.

you should also download the romhacking folder. The rom is ready to play but the folder contains the english-translated manual (read it, it's short), and has some non-spoiler hints in a txt file.

Since virtuanes can run at any resolution but will stretch the image, I recommend you go into the graphics options and select a 4:3 resolution (google the list), then in the options menu select zoom and zoom as many times as you need to make the window fit your screen. That way you preserve the original ratio.

Okay, I'm finally finished with this game. Actually, I'm still doing the wrap-up, you know, the post-credits epilogue. But I've been playing too much just to try and rush to the end so I'll finish that one later.

Tl;dr: Wow! And, huh?

I'll try not to spoil but there are mild spoilers below. The game suffers from pacing. I ended up looking up how to unlock the true route and beelined for it after I had unlocked everything there was in the VN itself. I was actually really close to unlocking it but by pure accident. I wasted days on nothing and would probably still be looking for it if I didn't know what choices to pick by looking up the answer online.

The true route is super long, because everything is compacted into it. If I had to summarize the game in just one sentence, it would be: ever17 tells you its secrets exactly when it wants to and not a moment earlier.

You literally can't theorize before the game infodumps the reveal onto you, and the true route is a lot of that. Also kind of a lot of stuff being repeated but in slightly different ways which you can't skip because it's technically new text. A lot of stuff that pertains to other characters was not introduced or explained in their route and only revealed in the true route. You can theorize all you want, but you'll be wrong because you are given literally nothing to form a theory.

With that said the reveals are great, I legit got goosebumps at several times in the real ending (my brain loves a good plot twist what can I say), so that's a mark of quality.

You can see it's kind of the 'grandaddy' of later VNs. The guy behind it later went on to make the zero escape and ai somnium files series.

There are some questionable topics. A 14yo girl who looks and acts like an 8yo is in love with every male character and even you (yes, you, the player)? Super weird. Thanks, Japan.

I do have to say something about the 4th dimension. The game explains it terribly and mystifies it. So the first dimension is length, second is width, third is depth, fourth is time. You can move in 3 dimensions upwards, downwards, left, right, forward and backward. If we had access to the 4th dimension, we could also move in time, as time is a direction too. That also implies you could move in time upwards and downwards, like a ladder, which we know as parallel dimensions. This is all real science by the way (if string theory is correct).

The game gets into a time travel plot briefly, which are always janky and in my opinion could have avoided that, but it really puts the sci in sci-fi otherwise. I mean, can you name any game from the 2000s that explores the 4th dimension?

It did start out as a kind of romance novel and has some light fanservice, but it's all salvaged by that ending. It's also ultimately a touching family story with a happy ending, which is refreshing in this age where everything has to be grimdark and edgy.

So would I recommend Ever17? Hell yes. You play it for the true route reveals, everything before that is just the appetizer. If you decide to play it, my advice is make sure you make every choice in the VN (requires 4 replays which means 4 endings), then look up the flowchart online and beeline for the true ending. Skip whatever you've already read. Make it efficient.

If you want to play it I recommend the PSP rom on PPSSPP which you can play on smartphones, with the english patch installed. The patch has some formatting issues (no commas and some text displays weirdly), but it's perfectly readable and the quality of the text itself is perfectly fine. The PC version (from 2002, not the remaster) also has its own english patch which might be better quality. I just like loading games on portable consoles.

I think I'm done with chunsoft VNs for a while now and my next game will probably be The Cry of the Cicadas, or for a lighter and shorter play, the new famicom detective game... I played the remakes of the first two on switch and while I loved the production quality, the plots were nothing to write home about. But the third one is apparently brand new and seems much more serious.

(I will say when spoilers start) I will probably update this when I finally finish the game. If you know me, I've been posting about VNs for a bit now. I like them for two reasons:

1. They can pull you in instantly with just two jpegs, a sound file and a line of text. The simplicity is impressive.
2. They are very easy to play, which is the perfect wind-down activity to help me sleep.

My trifecta of visual novels is the original ace attorney trilogy, virtue's last reward and paranormasight to give you an idea. You can tell I like mystery, plot twists and convoluted plots. And I like studying them too.

So with those three in mind, I set out to find more and landed on Ever17 as my next pick. I've been playing it for probably a little bit over a month now, and despite this, the in-game stats say that I have picked 80% of all choices, and seen ONLY 68% of all text. So this is a midway review that I feel I need to write.

I'm not going to talk about the story and characters so much because I'm more interested in the design and grander themes, and I don't want to spoil the game for you either. But it takes place on a sci-fi (set in the far future year of... 2017 lol) underwater theme park that suddenly gets evacuated, and 6 people get left behind when that happens. With the systems failing, the danger posed by the huge weight of the water surrounding the 200m deep park begins to loom...

[spoilers start from here]

I really liked some of the progression and player discovery in the VN, at least early on. My first playthrough was a pretty basic romance novel, which almost turned me off the game if I didn't know I had to expect something to happen. It had a happy ending where everyone got saved, and the MC and the love interest got together. Good for them. But then, something happened. The game addressed me in the outro cutscene, with the words:

The story is not an end yet. Only you are in the infinity loop

And the title of the game is Ever17: The Out of Infinity

Alright, I'm getting chills.

So in my second playthrough, I decided to take the opposite choices. If I made choice 2 the first time, I'd make choice 1 here.

And something else quickly happened. At some point, the textbox switched from blue to green after a choice. The name of the MC had changed too. It was only then that I realized the prologue had a grey textbox because it follows both MCs (no wonder I felt confused in the first prologue), and a specific choice decides who you will play as. Dang. That's right, this game has two MCs and never clues you in on it until you actually experience it for yourself. There's a lot of mindfucks moments like this one.

So hopes were rekindled for my second playthrough. I was expecting to play as the same guy and pick the alt choices, but instead I get a whole new perspective.

Long story short, I really enjoyed how my playthroughs progressed, and I don't know how much of that was through my own choices of picking one character over the other, or if the game was designed in a way that the first playthrough was a standard happy ending or what. It's a testament to its great design either way, because from playthrough 2 to 4, things got much darker. And then you stop getting good endings altogether. Instead, everyone dies. No matter which route you pick. The game suddenly veered from a romance VN to despair. There is blood on the love interest. Can you even go back to that happy ending, if you made the first choices? No, that's not the answer. You have to press on and end this infinity loop.

Subsequently you get exposed to tragic backstories by picking the alternate choices during the VN. You alternate between the MCs and the choices you pick. New dialogue opens up in places you've read before, but nothing too big at once... at least until you've made all the choices during the VN.

In the nitty-gritty, I think the game could have done some things better. For example, it's absolutely impossible to piece your own theories before the game exposes them to you point blank. There is no foreshadowing at all that you can work from. There is some good early exposition that keeps you hooked, but I also felt that having to replay over and over actually diminished the chapters I'd read before.

For example there's some interesting stuff like how a "phantom" that one MC sees in his route is a full-fledged character replacing another NPC in the other MC's storyline. That was a mindfuck moment because I picked the MC that sees the phantom first, and then playing as the other MC she's just... there with you, and everyone accepts that.

But replaying those phantom scenes and all the 'eerie' stuff with skip on completely detaches me from it after the first few times. Yes, someone kicked the can when nobody was close to it. It was eerie the first time, but it's happened five times now and all the effect is gone. I want to completely bypass the hide-and-seek moment so that I can focus on unlocking more endings.

The point I'm at now at 68% completion is that I'm basically walking in the dark. There are four routes I know (two MCs each with two routes), and I'm at a point where I'm only unlocking additions to endings. So I pick a route randomly, having to skip through the entire VN the entire time, and hope I get something new out of it. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't and I just wasted over 10 minutes of my life skipping through the VN for nothing. Because you have to make choices, you have to actively watch over the game until you get all the way to the end just for a bit more of an epilogue. At least skip stops when there is new text.

I don't even know if my random method is what the game expects me to do or if there's a mechanic at play. I know how to get locked into each of the four routes, but maybe I need to make specific choices before that point to unlock more epilogues? I don't know, and the game doesn't tell you anything. You can clearly tell it's kind of the "grandpappy" of these types of VNs. If I had to redo ever17, I'd make it playthrough-based instead of route-based, i.e. progress is based on your number of replays. The lead designer is also apparently behind the zero escape series, and virtue's last reward and its flowchart mechanic has become a staple of the genre now. It clearly solves a lot of problems that these VNs have.

I won't lie, it turned me off the game for days and I don't play it as much anymore. The middle is a slog and I'm starting to forget some of what happened in the VN that is probably important. But at 68% finished, I can tell there's still a lot of story I'm missing out on and that keeps me going. I really want to know how it all ties in together. Due to how much text there is left, I'm expecting that at some point the entire VN will restart but the characters will remember it happening before or something like that. Just spitballing.

What about the number 17 that somehow gets idly referenced but no one seems to pay any attention to? It's even in the game title! What about the character literally named You, which leads to some wall-breaking lines ("You handed me the wrench"), but no one seems to think much of? What about the bioscanner that constantly shifts between 5, 6 and 7 life signs? This gets introduced very early on in all routes but hasn't been resolved yet. One of the 6 characters is an AI, so she doesn't count in the lifesigns, leaving two questions.

In terms of themes, my first playthrough had a discussion about the third eye. I think jungian themes are just a staple of this niche genre and to be expected. I was expecting some chummy nonsense but it was actually quite well thought-out. It's a sci-fi game and there's a lot of science being talked about, which is a nice touch. For example they have buoyancy elevators that work by filling the elevator shaft with water, which lets them work even during power outages, but to get it to sink you need enough weight to displace the water. It adds some grounding elements and helps reassure the reader that this is going somewhere and wasn't thrown together haphazardly. I wonder if some of the themes, for example around AI, are seen differently today. Honestly for 2002 these themes were not out of the ordinary, AI and sci-fi was all the rage back then, and it's almost endearing the way they handle it sometimes. For example burning the AI onto a 1TB cd-rom, or how it uses "preprogrammed responses from a memory bank" when it doesn't know something. Now that we have inference, this feels almost childish, but in an affectionate way. It asks questions about what makes you you instead of a copy of your past self, in a ship of theseus kind of way.

If you want to play it, I recommend either the PC original or the PSP version that you can load on your phone, with english fan patches. The remake/remaster is apparently disliked, even though it seems to add some foreshadowing and make the facility look more like a theme park, which is what it's supposed to be. If you look at the picture in the post, you can see the environments are pretty bland and barren - and this is a good background pic. But apparently they mess up some references that were consciously added in the original script.