Evie's recent activity

  1. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    Link
    Over the past month or so, I played and finished the infamous, and infamously dense, Japanese visual novel Umineko: When Seagulls Cry. It's too early to call, but this might be one of my favourite...

    Over the past month or so, I played and finished the infamous, and infamously dense, Japanese visual novel Umineko: When Seagulls Cry. It's too early to call, but this might be one of my favourite stories I've ever experienced; it is also very very difficult to recommend.

    Part of that is the Outer Wilds effect. I read Umineko with no spoilers, knowing nothing about its premise except that it was a very long, very interesting mystery story, and that its themes were somewhat similar to Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out movie (this is the recommendation that finally got me to pick it up). This description occludes enough of the game's premise to be essentially wrong, but I wouldn't have had it any other way: a huge part of the joy of the game is not only the twists and turns of its central mystery, but the way its premise explodes and unravels over its monstrous runtime, until by the end, the story is barely recognizable. Thus to talk about Umineko's themes, its story, and its ideas is, to some extent, to deprive a future reader of the joy of experiencing all the wild twists and turns for themselves. I will talk a little bit about those things below, but before then, allow me to give the best, most spoiler-free recommendation of this story that I can.

    Umineko is a visual novel that is absolutely full of tropey otaku bullshit. Our main perspective character, multiple times in the very first chapter, attempts to grope his teenage cousin and their family maid; this is played for a joke both times; that's some of the least of the gross stuff that happens in this novel. It's also terribly paced, and the prose and dialogue are often embarrassingly clunky. However it also features some of the best character writing I've ever seen: depictions of trauma, abuse, neurodivergence, and gendered violence that were so realistic, so grounded, and so well handled, that I spent cumulatively several hours of this story crying so hard it made my chest hurt. If the pacing is awful, every scene is nonetheless absolutely essential; more than any story I've read, author Ryukushi07 seemed to read my mind as I theorized about the game's many puzzles and questions, so that the protagonists and I were incredibly in sync, and he often came to realizations, or came up with theories, at nearly the exact moment I did. Finally the game's exploration of its fascinating themes — themes which it would be a spoiler to even list out — is so comprehensive and complete that I doubt I will be able to get anything new out of the many, many works of art that attempt to tread similar ground going forward. If you can stomach the weebery (which does, ultimately, all have a point), and if you're used to reading stories with very little player interaction (like, you know, books) and if you're a fan of the mystery genre, Umineko is, in my opinion, an absolute must-read. Even if it takes you 100+ hours. I would just recommend looking up mods for the game, so that you can use better sprites and get the QoL features that aren't available in the Steam version.

    Umineko Spoilers

    In all honesty, this thing is still sinking in, and I don't really have a good handle on my thoughts on it yet. Might not, until I do a second read-through, or maybe watch someone else play it. Some scattered thoughts, though:

    I was absolutely shocked that the writer had the balls to, in a visual novel released in the 2000s, make the main female character, who has multiple romantic relationships with other cast members, a trans woman, and to only reveal this fact 7/8ths of the way into the novel, and to make her experience with her gender, her identity, and even her reproductive trauma, so essential the story. But Sayo isn't alone among the female cast in being an extraordinarily well-written character with tons of hidden depth: in fact all the women are portrayed with similar care, are all both terribly broken and totally sympathetic. While it does have some problems on that front (some of which probably stem from the game's refusal to moralize at any point) Umineko might be the most feminist story I've ever read; certainly it's the most feminist story I've read to be written by a man. The relationships between Ange and Eva, and between Rosa and Maria, reminded me of my own childhood, and my own relationships with my family, in the best and worst ways. This level of depth is achieved by replaying the murder mystery over and over, of course, and focusing on different characters each time; it wouldn't be possible in a traditional mystery film or novel — still, that every character (except a couple of the men: Krauss, Ghoda, George) is so well developed, and so essential both narratively and thematically, is an astonishing feat.

    I really loved all the metaficitional elements of the story, and the way that, much like the base fiction layer, these elements challenged the player to decide whether they were really magical or were simply metaphors for some more grounded, authorial truth. The seemingly half-dozen layers of narrative frames reminded me of House of Leaves — in terms of how difficult it was at certain points to keep track of everything — but really their function is more Brechtian; almost explicitly so, as there are multiple scenes in a theatre, and a witch of theatregoing, who invite other characters to observe the events of the story and consider not just what's happening but what it represents.

    I didn't really like any of the magical battles until chs. 6 and 7; those later chapters I felt were paced much better, and the magical battles were easier to interpret as extensions of the world's rules, whereas the fights in the first half of the story tended to really drag and often were much harder to parse. Now that I know the logic of how the battles work, I wonder whether my opinion on this would change on reread.

    I also didn't like the bits in chapter 5 where the game's writer Ryukushi essentially turned to camera and said, "hey! here are the rules of this world! here's how to interpret certain scenes! trust me, I do have a plan, this isn't random bullshit, it's all solvable." I was already operating under the assumption that it was, Ryukushi, and I trusted you and your storytelling, so when you told me "you have to love and trust the author and not stop thinking or else the story won't mean anything," it just felt condescending and desperate, especially since chapter 5 was in my experience, the worst chapter in the game, and it used the rules in an inconsistent and confusing way (to be fair there was a justification for it, but the novel almost filtered me here. No amount of "well but it was supposed to be a confusing and jarring experience" will suddenly make me switch over to enjoying it, especially when the pacing is how it is).

    In general there's a lot, including the solutions to many of the game's locked room mysteries, that's left ambiguous. I like this from a thematic perspective, but not from a plot perspective; I'd have liked to have the solutions for at least eps. 1-4 laid out in a more clear way, though I understand why Ryukushi chose not to (for what its worth, I respect this decision a lot less considering he flip-flopped and explained everything in the manga adaptation). Still, it's weird how a lot of the really fantastic character and thematic work here is subtextual, but then dialogues scenes will have their subtext aggressively over-explained, as with the comical scene in chapter 1 where it's repeated several times in narration that "THEREFORE, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, [X CHARACTER] NEEDED A LOT OF MONEY, RIGHT NOW" after that information had already been conveyed through some very elegant and engaging dialogue. In some respects this story definitely needs to trust the reader more; I understand that it was originally released serially, and so a lot of the scenes of being obvious were probably built as explicit responses to the Japanese 2channers trying to "solve" the game as it came out.

    Overall, Umineko is one of those experiences that has instantly rendered all of my WIP drafts worthless, because of the huge impact it's had on the way I think about writing in genereal and some of the themes I aim to explore in specific. Plus, the music, is, like, some of the best I've ever heard in a game. God. I'm still kind of in a recovery period, writing this now having finished the VN over a day ago, just not really capable of thinking about much of anything, reading or playing much of anything. What an experience. I suspect that this past month of my life will, from here on out, be "the Umineko month."

    As a palette cleanser, I chased with the indie game Unpacking, which is a classic cozy game about emptying boxes and organizing your room as you move from your childhood home, to your college dorm, to your first apartment and so on. It's a pleasant, short experience, without any real challenge, which is just what I need right about now. I think what I'd heard about the game in the past is that it's about breaking up with your shitty boyfriend, which frankly kinda scared me off of it, but actually it's more about growing up, and it turns out to be more of a queer game in the end, which was a pleasant surprise. And, to be honest, this kind of cleaning and organizing stuff is very relaxing to me in real life. I kind of like these games that invent fictional chores for you to do because I don't always have enough chores in my real life — especially since for the past couple weeks most of the ladies I live with have been away on various trips.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly - Final Thread for Season 3 in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    Thanks for looking around and for the nice words! I really enjoyed my tour earlier this week too :)

    Thanks for looking around and for the nice words! I really enjoyed my tour earlier this week too :)

    3 votes

  3. Comment on What are we in a golden age of? in ~talk

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I had the same opinion as you, and my interaction with WH40K is still quite limited, but having played Rogue Trader earlier this year, it did in fact change my thoughts about the setting. I think...

    I had the same opinion as you, and my interaction with WH40K is still quite limited, but having played Rogue Trader earlier this year, it did in fact change my thoughts about the setting. I think the thing you don't get from just hearing the annoying powerscaling-ass community from the outside is just how absurd, campy, and dare I say queer the 40K universe is. Often it functions as a sendup of bureaucracy, religion and militarism that is genuinely delightful because of how comically, unbelievably dark it is. The bleakness of the setting is actually so great that it loops back around to being silly and almost weightless -- at least in Rogue Trader anyway; I can't say whether all 40K media is so self-aware.

    7 votes

  4. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I've been wanting to try out FoM now that it's in 1.0, since I hear that the character writing is genuinely great, but I've never played Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or any of those types of...

    I've been wanting to try out FoM now that it's in 1.0, since I hear that the character writing is genuinely great, but I've never played Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or any of those types of games. Would Mistria be approachable for someone new to the genre, do you think? I only ever hear long-time farming sim fans talking about it

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Control Resonant has gone gold. Physical release date for the game has been moved to October 15th. in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    The last two Remedy games can be described as having "good enough" combat (in Control's case, phenomenal in gamefeel but lacking in depth) to carry you through an otherworldly experience that...

    The last two Remedy games can be described as having "good enough" combat (in Control's case, phenomenal in gamefeel but lacking in depth) to carry you through an otherworldly experience that emphasizes writing, atmosphere, art direction and an utterly unique multimedia presentational style, over gameplay. FWIW though I played Control twice on M+K and though I rebound a couple inputs for comfort I found it very easy. Third person shooters are usually comfortable on both types of input.

    10 votes

  6. Comment on Is it time to include pronouns? in ~tildes

    Evie
    Link
    I don't feel like I would use a pronoun feature (I mean, my username is gendered enough already, no?) and clearly a lot of people in this thread feel the same, but I think there are people here...

    I don't feel like I would use a pronoun feature (I mean, my username is gendered enough already, no?) and clearly a lot of people in this thread feel the same, but I think there are people here who would and for that reason I agree it would be a good feature to implement. Having the option there if they want it would cost other users nothing. It's also faintly annoying that on so much of the internet, Tildes included, the default assumption is that everyone is a man, and such a feature might help with that.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I've been really great actually! Ah yeah that makes sense with the spoilers. I mean, I basically already knew those things too well before the chapter happened just from the subtext, but there's a...

    I've been really great actually!

    Ah yeah that makes sense with the spoilers. I mean, I basically already knew those things too well before the chapter happened just from the subtext, but there's a difference between inferring it and being told. One thing that all of us knew when chapter 10 came out, but that a lot of new players don't get spoiled on,

    is the whole twist with Nautika. Because, of course, we all saw her evolved design when she was being marketed or when she was on-banner, and there's even a joke about that in the story. But newer players might never have had cause to see Nautika by chapter 10 because she's a limited

    Another victim of chapter 9 :') it is, by some margin, my favorite chapter in the game and in fact one of my favorite stories in any game but I do recognize that it's pretty opaque and among the community it's definitely the most divisive main story chapter. A good deal of its impact relies on your familiarity with the historical and philosophical context surrounding it, let me put it that way.

    And yeah, the real doomed yuri in this game is losing your 50/50 so that the lesbians can't both be on your account </3 Always glad to hear your thoughts!

    1 vote

  8. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Hi Carrow! How you been? So Reverse 1999's English-speaking community also was really jonesing for more Druvis around the release of chapter 10 a year ago. I had this same discussion at the time...

    Hi Carrow! How you been?

    So Reverse 1999's English-speaking community also was really jonesing for more Druvis around the release of chapter 10 a year ago. I had this same discussion at the time actually...

    The main reason not to stick Druvis in the story is that she's a powerful, distinct character who already concluded her arc in Chapter 4. As you've no doubt noticed the main story is highly episodic. Every chapter you have to introduce an almost entirely new cast: their world, their ideas, their personalities, their positions on the chapter's main conflict. Having too many recurring characters there might create narrative inefficiencies -- if Druvis were in chapter 9, for instance, she would either be reduced to a reactive background character, or else the writers would need to give her a perspective on prison, surveillance, fate, the mental healthcare system, Latin American literature. And what does Druvis know about these things? To say nothing of chapters which don't involve the main cast at all!

    In contrast, Vertin and Sonetto are unobtrusive characters who travel quite well. Having been raised in the Foundation they both have broad educations; they're both repressed or reserved enough that their perspectives don't overtake the narrative; their arcs are ongoing, but are general enough to fold into a wide variety of stories (Sonetto's increasing conflict between her love and her duty; Vertin's childhood trauma and need for a mother).

    This is probably why we see so much of TK14 (the cute Chinese ship name for the Vertin/Sonetto pairing) in the main story and so comparatively little of Regulus, Sotheby, or Druvis: the latter have already had complete character arcs in one chapter or another, and are harder to integrate into a variety of stories. Druvis maybe has it especially rough because her arcane abilities are super strong when Reverse usually wants its protagonists to be largely powerless most of the time.

    If I can ask, what part of chapter 10 got spoiled for you? I remember really not liking that chapter or chapter 11 on release actually but they've both really grown on me with distance, I think Paradise Regained does its horror and mystery stuff extremely well for a visual novel, and the prose and the character work in 11 is fantastic as well.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Tildos, let's be unserious for a while; show us your dankest memes and god-tier shitposts! in ~talk

  10. Comment on Women should be able to open things in ~life.women

    Evie
    Link Parent
    When I transed my gender I was shocked by how quickly I lost the ability to open containers. I knew the medicine makes trans women lose a lot of muscle but I didn't expect it to really affect my...

    When I transed my gender I was shocked by how quickly I lost the ability to open containers. I knew the medicine makes trans women lose a lot of muscle but I didn't expect it to really affect my daily life like that. Had to learn all the alternative methods for jars, and in general add exercise to my routine so that I wouldn't lose my ability to, like, carry a jug of milk for a few blocks.

    24 votes

  11. Comment on Help selecting a mechanical keyboard in ~comp

    Evie
    Link
    For a couple years now one of the most popular "enthusiast" mechanical keyboards has been the Wobkey Rainy75 (or one of a few similar 75% Chinese aluminum keyboard that came at similar price...

    For a couple years now one of the most popular "enthusiast" mechanical keyboards has been the Wobkey Rainy75 (or one of a few similar 75% Chinese aluminum keyboard that came at similar price points at that time like the Womier sk75 that I have). It fits your needs, it's highly customizable and upgradable if you want to go that route; it's got a ton of very premium features for the price; you can buy it on Amazon for like $150 or less.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on November 2025 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I think that was kinda the gist of my thoughts, right? The game really worked on me, I was fucking terrified, but I thought its characters were weak and its themes were not particularly novel or...

    I think that was kinda the gist of my thoughts, right? The game really worked on me, I was fucking terrified, but I thought its characters were weak and its themes were not particularly novel or psychologically affecting? I gotta tell you Pickles unlike say Dead Space which I wrote up negatively but with distance am ultimately quite positive on, Soma has only smeared into an indistinct mass in my memory. I genuinely categorize it as a narrative and experience that was only so beloved because it was "good, for a video game, at that time." And, hey, I honestly think Cyberpunk's handling of the teletransportation paradox is arguably worse for how it largely fails to address it at all, but if you're not as thalassaphobic as I am I can definitely see how the horror and psychological elements in there would be scarier to you. I myself have a few non-horror games (Returnal and Control and The Forgotten City) that have scared me more than any horror game ever could!

    PS sorry for necroing to anyone reading this

    1 vote

  13. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in Remnant, I've unlocked everything, even the hardcore campaign rewards; I've maxed every weapon, it's probably my favorite Soulslike. Actually if you're...

    I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in Remnant, I've unlocked everything, even the hardcore campaign rewards; I've maxed every weapon, it's probably my favorite Soulslike.

    Actually if you're talking about what I think you are that "stand in the spot for five minutes" class unlock (the Invoker, right? The skill focused one?) is one of my favorite things in the game and an anecdote I use to explain why I love it! That map was DLC, and when I watched a livestream where they found the class on day 1 it was then insanely rewarding to spend the next week joining random co-op games and showing clueless newer players where to stand and say "just wait... I promise!" There was one DLC hunt with a puzzle and a secret weapon behind it that I recall taking literal weeks to find a general solution for in the Discord (I got it earlier through brute force).

    Because the game's secrets are so obscure, it really incentivized joining the community to get information and then actually play co-op, which is what the game was designed for! But because the rooms you get (and therefore the loot in them) is random each campaign, you still have to come up with your own builds instead of following community guides 1-to-1. I had more fun making and testing builds in Remnant than in any other game and then rocking up to the boss in someone's nightmare co-op campaign with some bullshit that no one's ever used before in my loadout and having it somehow kinda work was just a delightful experience.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on What are you looking forward to? in ~talk

    Evie
    Link
    In September my favorite novelist China Mieville is releasing The Rouse, his first novel in years and years; around the same time my favorite game developer Remedy is releasing their new game...

    In September my favorite novelist China Mieville is releasing The Rouse, his first novel in years and years; around the same time my favorite game developer Remedy is releasing their new game Control: Resonant; around the same time the ladies I live with will be going on a vacation, so I get a break from my cleaning duties and will be able to really immerse myself. Oh, and I have s'mores brownies that I came up with about to come out of the oven, that's gonna be great

    9 votes

  15. Comment on Neuromancer | Teaser trailer in ~movies

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I think the Apple TV audience does tend to like this kind of thing so I wouldn't worry too much about it succeeding. They've done lots of these conceptual, short-run genrefic shows and it seems to...

    I think the Apple TV audience does tend to like this kind of thing so I wouldn't worry too much about it succeeding. They've done lots of these conceptual, short-run genrefic shows and it seems to be working out.

    9 votes

  16. Comment on What are your favourite fragrances, and why? in ~talk

    Evie
    (edited )
    Link
    I think you and I have talked about this before, but the two I use for daily wear are Hermes Eau de Merveilles Bleue and Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Herba Fresca. I do prefer the blue one (I love...

    I think you and I have talked about this before, but the two I use for daily wear are Hermes Eau de Merveilles Bleue and Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Herba Fresca. I do prefer the blue one (I love aquatics and this one reminds me of, like, a winter Seattle ferry ride: cold water, breeze, bare rock) and find myself wearing it more but unfortunately I think I smell better in greens and the Herba Fresca has these really interesting spicy and minty notes on me. I'm not an expert though!

    How I got into fragrance is kind of stupid. A lesbian oriented gacha I play, Reverse 1999, has canonical fragrance notes for all the characters, and I thought, "I should have a fragrance, too! Which of these women do I want to smell like?" Well, it turns out, they released perfumes based on the characters as merch. The one based on the main character, Vertin, was an objectively shallow and uninteresting androgynous aquatic fragrance but I bought it and liked it and it was a start.

    Edit: I should mention that the Eau de Merveilles is for some reason a complete compliment magnet. I almost literally can't go out wearing it without someone saying, "wow, you smell really good, what perfume are you wearing?"

    14 votes

  17. Comment on Is it possible to not want to be happy? in ~talk

    Evie
    Link
    Oh yeah this happened to me for a while. I think it's fairly common, when you're depressed, to want it to get worse. If I had to try to access that mindset now -- it's foreign to me, with so much...

    Oh yeah this happened to me for a while. I think it's fairly common, when you're depressed, to want it to get worse. If I had to try to access that mindset now -- it's foreign to me, with so much distance -- I'd say that happiness feels impossible, so inconceivable that you can't even imagine how you would begin to pursue it, and every suggestion towards that end becomes trite. But depression -- misery, malaise, an awful adhesion between the back and the bedsheets, every morning -- it's not a place you can imagine living. It's too dull, too purgatorial. To get worse is to have a direction, the only one you can imagine. Towards suicide, I guess, or some other kind of self annihilation. And it's not all bad, going downhill. There's all kinds of tiny thrills: the thrill of pity, from those around you; the thrill of novel thinking, as you invent new arguments to justify the unjustifiable. The thrill of wind in your hair, chills and goosebumps. From other depressed people, I've heard similar sentiments. It's even a line from the suicidal alcoholic protagonist in Disco Elysium: "I don't want to get better, I want to get worse."

    21 votes

  18. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    Evie
    Link
    For most of this week, I was playing Luna Abyss! Luna Abyss Where to start? This game reminds me of Respawn's Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order (and its sequel.) Formally, Luna Abyss, a double-A bullet...

    For most of this week, I was playing Luna Abyss!

    Luna Abyss

    Where to start?

    This game reminds me of Respawn's Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order (and its sequel.) Formally, Luna Abyss, a double-A bullet hell fps, developed by Kwalee Labs, released this year, bears no resemblance to Respawn's pair of third-person metroidvania action games. The similarities lie more in the fact that both games feel like amalgams of other, better games. In Fallen Order, that's Uncharted, and Dark Souls, and Titanfall; in Luna Abyss, the obvious inspirations are Control, Returnal, and DOOM Eternal; to say nothing of the megastructure the game is set in, inspired by the likes of Naissance and BLAME!

    Undeniably, both of these works are derivative; they borrow a lot and add only a little that's new. But in Luna Abyss's defense, the result in this case is something that feels starkly different from its inspirations. It's not blindly borrowing ideas even when they don't fit; instead, it's remixing bits of gameplay formulae to create a unique combat experience; it's suspending its derivative visual ideas within stark and striking compositions. Compared to the Jedi games, it might be best to say that it's sampling and interpolating ideas from other games, not remixing them — and the result is a pretty unique experience even if its inspirations are obvious in every frame of every scenario.

    The main, notably excellent thing about Luna Abyss is its pacing. The game is an entirely linear shooter, though it adds in some platforming segments to complement a moveset that grows as the game progresses, some gameplay set pieces about possessing giant robots for variety. What's notable about this is that the best parts of the game are often the parts where there is no combat. The artists at Kwalee Labs are masters of composition, and they're able to create extremely striking environments that made me feel tiny, agorophobic, and lost, despite how on-rails the game actually is. I've been writing a piece about the way Alan Wake 2 uses negative space — the space between combat — to build dread, and suspense; the way that game is comfortable with silence, happy to let the player stew. This is a quality Luna Abyss shares: for as frantic as its combat is when it breaks out, the game is very slow and deliberate with its pacing, and gives the player massive amounts of time to soak in its environment and world, to curate a specific emotion, which in its case is less dread, more worry and awe and smallness. But the game also uses negative space in a very literal, artistic sense. The game makes heavy use of blacks, of darkness with tiny areas of light and definition to direct the eye. On my super fancy high color accuracy HDR OLED display with all the fixings, there were often scenes where I literally couldn't see what was around me, not even the gun in my hand, and I was making leaps of faith towards a spot of red in the distance, hoping that it indicated a platform to land on. Even when the player isn't shrouded in darkness, the game constructs its environments and its skyboxes with stark, low-detail blacks and whites, often putting blurring distance fog between the player and the surrounding floor, ceilings and walls, to better frame major set pieces, create a sense of scale, and/or guide the player through the level. The way this game is composed, and the way it guides the player, should genuinely be studied in art schools. It's exceptionally good.

    I'm not sure I would call the combat good — I might even be willing to say I dislike it — but it's certainly distinct. It combines DOOM Eternal's lock-and-key style combat design, where specific enemies can only really be damaged by specific guns, with Returnal's bullet hell attack patterns, and a healthy dose of fast, floaty movement to keep things interesting. It includes glory kills which can either heal the player (as DOOM's did) or turn the enemy into a grenade, to explode and damage other enemies, which makes every kill a decision instead of a brief breath of invulnerability. It often stretches its battles out over long platforming segments, forcing the player to balance moving forward with killing enemies before their pressure becomes overwhelming. The result is a very mentally fatiguing system full of constant decision pressure — so to alleviate the stress, the game has an ADS lock-on system so aggressive that it becomes almost physically impossible to miss your shots, meaning you can focus entirely on managing your weapon rotations and avoiding the enemies' attacks.

    The system has problems, don't get me wrong; the weapons often feel too similar, and you only really get three of them — the fourth is only for the last couple levels, is super powerful but can only be fired very occasionally due to its tremendous cooldown period, a sort of BFG-9000 that you'll typically use as a fight opener. At certain points it feels like it becomes optimal to play the game like a cover shooter, hiding behind level props or bits of terrain to snipe at enemies, instead of dashing into the action like the game is clearly designed for. But the game is nine hours long, and probably less than half of that is combat, so it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome, and the very unique feel of the combat was more than enough to keep me interested in it. Oh, I should note that I played on the highest, "Scourge" difficulty because I remembered the game's demo being trivially easy — and that remained true for the first couple levels, but the game eventually grew some real teeth, especially in the bossfights, which all took several attempts and all were pretty interesting both visually and mechanically, even if they showed repetitive gameplay design patterns.

    The part of a game I care the most about usually is the story, and unfortunately I don't think Luna Abyss's is anything to write home about. Don't get me wrong, it had some elements that I liked: it was cryptic in a way that tickled my brain, without veering into Souls-level impenetrability; it had some neat twists, and some cool, genderfucked characters. But on the other hand, it leaned far too heavily into what felt to me like uninspired Tarot and Norse mythology references, and it had the kind of abrupt ending that usually indicates that the team ran out of budget. A charitable reading of the game could infuse it with a lot of depth. Some interesting points could be made about how the player character Fawkes is only ever a side character, is constantly offered choices that, for them and the player, aren't actually choices at all along a totally linear journey; the game is clearly making a point about power, revolution, and incarceration; its family-drama twist gives the game more emotional weight without undermining the narrative up to that point. But personally, I found the gameplay and exploration experience to be much more compelling than the story, which I would only call "good" in the context of first person shooter stories; which suffers from being too obscure to be affecting, too derivative to be arresting, and, in dialogue, too contemporary to feel mythic or symbolic or weighty.

    So Luna Abyss is in some respects a flawed game, but I found it tremendously enjoyable and interesting, and, in terms of its art direction and pacing, genuinely, uniquely excellent. Much like last years Expedition 33, it felt like a really great freshman effort, where while I wasn't over the moon (haha get it because the game is set inside of a moon and Luna is in the title) about every aspect of the final product, I can't wait to see what the studio does next. Oh, hold on, I'm getting a phone call. One second.

    Okay, so I've just been informed that the studio that made this game was unceremoniously shuttered and everyone was laid off and they might never get the chance to get another crack at making a game? Oh, ok. I mean, the credits were so short that they had to pad them out by listing the law firms and accountants that the studio contracted, the game had a Game Pass deal, it can't have cost that much to make but — well, I guess that's the state of the gaming landscape in 2026.

    What a fucking bummer. Anyway. I encourage you to play Luna Abyss, because it's still excellent. And if you can find a way to get it without sending a dime over to the shit ass publisher so much the better. More than any game I've played, I think Luna Abyss deserves to be a cult classic that people stumble on and are fascinated by for years to come. How can a game be so derivative, and yet also be so compelling, and esoteric, and singular? Well, since the people who made it have all been summarily executed — that's what "laid off" means, right? I assume it's some kind of euphemism — I guess we'll never know, but playing the game and wondering at it provides its own kind of answer.

    I also played the Through the Ashes campaign DLC for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (will this crazy DYKE ever stop talking about Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous?) I held off on playing the DLC for a long time because it's a self-contained campaign with very little relevance to the main game — only using the same systems, is only set in the same city as the game's opening act — but I'm actually disappointed it took me so long to get around to it. "Through the Ashes" is a really interesting piece of design that injects gallons of challenge and interactivity into Wrath's low-level adventuring experience. While Wrath of the Righteous is a power fantasy game, "Through the Ashes," a more im-sim inspired story about a few weak townspeople navigating a treacherous city in the wake of a demon attack, is brutally difficult, and on the higher difficulties, demanded a ton of thought and creativity to get through it. It exerts a ton of resource pressure, makes even getting basic gear a forbiddingly difficult task, and really stretches your system knowledge. "Through the Ashes" also has a neat gimmick where, if you want to be heroic, you can shepherd three to five NPCs through the campaign — but they're all ill, so keeping them alive will put even more pressure on your limited healing/restoration resources. When my journey through the DLC ended with me bringing them all safely to the end, it was delightful and satisfying. I had to really work to get there!

    "Through the Ashes" would probably be better in a game with more in-built systems for environmental interactions, like Larian's Baldur's Gate 3. As it is, though the game works hard to offer alternative approaches to combat, the way it does so doesn't ever feel fully natural. Wrath's system was really built around fighting, so giving the player more out-of-combat options mostly just boiled down to putting a contextual prompt in the world here or there. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but it didn't get me thinking creatively about how to use the environment so much as it got me looking around the world for an encounter's auto-win button: a cart on a hill somewhere to push down into the enemies; a spot where I was prompted to throw a rope to climb up a wall and ping kinetic blasts down at cultists who didn't have rope themselves.

    "Through the Ashes" was fairly light on narrative content and roleplaying, but the game used a milestone leveling system (where you got XP from completing story quests, instead of by killing monsters) to further disincentive combat, and to encourage you to protect the NPCs and see their stories. This system also works well as a pacing tool — since you level up after finishing a quest, you're often doing so at a moment of rest: after a big battle, or a decision, or an emotional moment, or at the end of an area, instead of the way it works in the main game where levels would often seem to come at a random time: in the middle of a dungeon, for instance, when you don't really want to have do the tedious work of leveling all your characters. Clearly this leveling system was an experiment for Owlcat — like a lot of the stuff in the DLC — and while I didn't notice much of its ideas making its way into their next game Rogue Trader, I think "Through the Ashes" does a good job introducing new gameplay ideas and using them to really stretch the player to their limits. Clearing it did require a frustrating amount of save scumming, though! It's not at all built for a new player.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    Evie
    Link Parent
    I went to the museum this morning so I think I'm gonna hop on for a while to do a map art sometime in the next week, I'll be excited to see what progress you've made!

    I went to the museum this morning so I think I'm gonna hop on for a while to do a map art sometime in the next week, I'll be excited to see what progress you've made!

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Looking for feedback and just art criticism of my work in ~creative

    Evie
    Link
    Hi Faye! Thanks for posting your art here for us! I already gave you my thoughts about Gash when you posted it back during Tildes Make Something Month last year -- what I said generally was that I...

    Hi Faye! Thanks for posting your art here for us! I already gave you my thoughts about Gash when you posted it back during Tildes Make Something Month last year -- what I said generally was that I liked it very much and would love to see the concept explored more and I'm really happy you feel the same and decided to do more work in the same space.

    Bound is a really interesting piece. I think I like it a lot. It pulls up some negative feelings in me. I want to point specifically at the feet photograph because I think it's the better of the two, and that's for a conceptual reason. Obviously neither of these two photos look anything like how you look when you're actually tied up. In the image with the feet, attention is really drawn to this fact by the way that the feet appear to bow away from each other at the ankles -- the point where they're being supposedly tied -- so the yarn feels much more like an imposition, like something the subject of the photo is resisting. It's evocative. By contrast, the photo of the hands just feels like it's doing a little less. And the photos are nearly identical, compositionally, in terms of lighting, in terms of background, so I'm not sure how much is added by displaying both of them.

    The stark vibe you're going for really comes through. The flooring? in the background gives me the vibes of, like, your grandmother's basement. And because the subject is shot right against the background with basically no depth of field it feels a little bit claustrophobic -- on the other hand, the thing you're going for where I'm supposed to imagine these two photos as sort of different bodies/parts of the body existing in the same space doesn't come across for me, even after hearing that's the intent. I think that's because of the identical lighting and composition between photos; they read to me more like two drafts of the same photo. There might be more you could do with lighting to situate both the photos within the same space?

    That said, I mean, I think the concept is exceptionally strong here, it's a lot more human and visceral than Gash was, and I already thought that one was surprisingly stark and affecting. The use of the chain stitch is a great choice here and I'm impressed by how natural it looks... i.e. it's not easy to make out any kind of warping or tearing as a result of the stitching.

    I'm interested by the hypothetical idea of a piece where the subject is in some way aware of and interacting with the yarn. What might that look like? Would that be an interesting direction for you?

    I'm honestly super happy to see more of your work, thanks again for sharing!

    2 votes