Skip to content

Posts categoriezed as Games

Posts about games. There’s bunches.

October Surprise (i updated)

October Surprise (i updated) published on No Comments on October Surprise (i updated)
Image

I forgot to do a recap post for last month, though it wasn’t an especially productive one. I got a mostly finished Tabletop Sim version of Critical Heaven put together for testing, then proceeded to not do much testing. I had a few requests to use a hex map, which I honestly do like parts of but hope that the turning restriction doesn’t trip the pace of the game up. I’ve yet to put skills to the Tactics Cards, but the individual girls’ skills are there to test and once I’m satisfied with that I’ll slap that last layer of complexity on top of it all and hope it doesn’t break.

My goal is basically to keep the game fast paced and simple, but ideally with enough meat there for people to have fun with team compositions and deck builds. As with Irrgarten (god, remember that? I should finish that too), I’m doing the tabletop approach so I can put something out there while I struggle to absorb rudimentary coding lessons. That and I like the idea of a mecha musume tactics game with ‘feelies’ and I swear I don’t mean that in a bad way. (Ideally it would be cool to have miniatures, even/especially customizable ones for people to personalize squadrons with.) I plan on adding some more static pages to the site as more game stuff is presentable, so keep an eye out for that.

To recap, Critical Heaven is a short-session strategy battle game featuring Sprites, cute and powerful beings attached to AirFrames who battle for air superiority and claim to the land and resources below it. It’s inspired by the art trends of humanizing machines and programs as well as some of the weird, nichey tactical RPGs I’ve enjoyed. (Yggdra Union and Rondo of Swords were particularly big influences in how to work ‘action’ and ‘flow’ into a turn based battle.)

Since my posting’s gotten so erratic as to distrupt the monthly recap format, I’m just going to batch upload some of my recent works, stopping short of the Slayers Artober I’m participating in since that should be enough images to be a thing in its own right.

  • Eishi has a new sweater and now we have to hear about it
  • Lina’s blog merch
  • Mirage III, Critical Heaven
  • Chengdu J-7, a MiG-21 clone
  • i thik its some girl from inuyasha or sumthn
  • Su-27 Flanker
  • Eishi at the park
  • Casual Miko-yan
  • Eishi sketch
  • Eishi not a sketch
  • misc sketches, Flogger and Hornet
  • Consortium unit poll

Well, This Was Overdue

Well, This Was Overdue published on 1 Comment on Well, This Was Overdue

Years ago, I had a handful of Game Informer magazines. I didn’t have a subscription, as much as I enjoyed it, especially the section they dedicated to oddball import titles. Of them, for some reason, possibly just due to the sheer awesomeness of the title, one particular Japanese PlayStation game stuck in my brain for years, quietly lurking until the chance came to make itself known. So, after finally remembering how to get a PS emulator to work (don’t laugh; the only time I ever used one was before I found an actual copy of Misadventures of Tron Bonne) so I could stream MegaMan Legends for RGLtv, I got the crazy idea to finally take that game for a test drive.

SPEED POWER GUNBIKE! God, just say that out loud. Doesn’t that feel great? Gunbike is actually the first game made by IntiCreates, currently one of the best developers of “new retro” style games like Blaster Master Zero, Azure Striker Gunvolt, and the later MegaMan titles. Interestingly enough, this game uses a cartoony low-poly style that kind of makes it look a little similar to Mega Man Legends at a glance. I guess they’ve just always had that kind of style. History lesson aside, I’ve found Gunbike to be seriously entertaining once the initial awkwardness of the controls was… mostly past. Make no mistake, this gem is cut rough around the edges. A fair amount of it can probably be blamed on being a pre Dual Shock PS1 title, which basicaly means a lack of precision movement and the camera is your cruel and uncaring master. Each character has a unique set of special attacks from mostly-undocumented controller inputs that aren’t… esoecially useful for the most part. But still, the core idea is gold and with some adjustment it’s a load of fun to play.

In the far-flung year of 2097, an alien race known as the Michi have invaded, and conventional weaponry is useless against them. To combat the alien threat, Gunbikes were developed as a means to combat the Michi by turning soldiers into living bullets and slam into them. I assume this is some kind of life energy/chi thing, but I can’t be sure since information on the game is surprisingly hard to come by, even on the Internets age. Most of what I know of the storyline comes from a friend giving some manual scans I found a once-over, an old IGN article that says the game “will be” released in November 1997 and Hardcore Gaming 101’s article on it. I would love to learn more about the storyline because the ending is really weird and I want to know how things escalate to the heroes flying naked though space surrounded by 2001: A Space Odyssey slabs. (Is it still a spoiler if it’s not coherent?)

Regardless of which of the three drivers you choose, the basics remain the same- Zoom around levels on a transforming super motorcycle, smashing enemies and roadblocks on your way to bosses. The bikes can transform from bike mode, to a wider-stanced Rally Mode, to Robot Mode, where your offensive powers are pretty much all based. The bike is the fastest, but taking damage in this form will fling the rider off the seat and force them to run back to it, like Excitebike. Wasting time is a Very Bad Thing in this, because your supply of “Anergy” (sic) is constantly ticking down, and depletes in chunks when you are hit by enemies as well. Since your life and timer are one and the same, the emphasis of the game is on moving as fast and efficiently as possible. Ippei is the easiest to use, a hot blooded former biker gang leader who wants to avenge his brother’s death to the Michi and also seems to really bond with his Gunbike’s computer. Ami is an artificial human created from a mix of human and Michi DNA, with some mental issues. Major Nouno rounds out the team as the ‘cool senior’ type character, at least until he loses it and turns on everyone.

So yeah, that’s been one among many sidetracks lately. Here, have a sketch dump!

 

 

Randomizer Encounters and Other Twitchery

Randomizer Encounters and Other Twitchery published on No Comments on Randomizer Encounters and Other Twitchery

 

Been pretty busy the past few weeks between settling into the new place and participating in RGL stuff, but still setting aside time to draw where I can and am not spazzing out. Luckily the things I was stressing most about didn’t come to pass (owing money for repairs and junk on the old place since it was a little junky since day one and four years of single guy dwelling didn’t help it out much, and some dickery involving the utility company0 and I’ve been back in a much more productive kind of headspace. My own channel and work are doing pretty decent right now, I’m now among the first bunch of streamers invited to Affiliate status, so if anyone catches me streaming and feels like, feel free to toss a Bit tip my way. I need to do some work updating this site to better show off my projects since WordPress was originally just adopted as an easy, more streamlined way to get text posts and articles online. It’s a bit trickier to get comic page layouts and gallery updates up and going.

So, on the subject of projects, I’m still planning to do the card game and set up a proper page for it to give an overview of the rules and general setting for the sake of gathering some interest, though the thing that I’m about to start seriously picking away at is, of all things, a re-imagining of Revolver Knight! It’s a drastic overhaul, but it should be a pretty massive improvement as a story too. I could gripe about the old one for hours (though I still don’t hate it enough to just pull the whole thing down) but the chief problem with RK, IMO was I just tried to jam too many ‘cool things’ into it. It was kind of intended to be a pastiche or mashup of stuff I thought was cool in various games and anime at the time, which probably should have been a warning sign from the get-go, but it was received decently in the beginning so I ran with it. Over time though, I kind of ran out of steam and the later chapters are rushed in an effort to show off more of the world but not really afford time to flesh them out by much. One of the biggest things I think will help is focusing more on the small-level story, sticking with the characters and their homeland and how things are affecting THEM and not forcing an ‘epic’ cross country trek. I’ve been roughing out the first chapter already and may release it as a stand alone .pdf or something to see how people enjoy it to see whether to continue it or focus on something else.

On another topic, I’ve been pretty interested in game randomizers lately, though the only one I’m really playing is The Guardian Legend one, TGL Worlds. It doesn’t have a very robust set of features compared to the Zelda ones where you can toggle some features for the seed, you just insert a rom and it spits out a randomized version of it. It also doesn’t really seem to check very thoroughly that it will give you a completable version of the game. But it does do the chief thing I want and actually alter maps, vs. just shuffling item placement between chests. It does some pretty wacky stuff and tends to cluster items and rooms of a same type together, making it easy to get overpowered (and overly costly) weapons early on… or create chains of 3-4 save chambers end to end. Still, it’s a pretty cool way to breathe new life into an old game I already like, just like trying to adopt some of the tricks speedrunners use to make some of the more aggravating bosses and stuff go down all the faster.

Wiping All Out~

Wiping All Out~ published on No Comments on Wiping All Out~

2016-11-03-ether I’ve been slowly revising and testing Irrgarten lately, but mostly watching/broadcasting entirely too much gaming content on Twitch. I do hope to have a new playable demo uploaded fairly soon. I look to kind of ‘generify’ the character stats for balance’s sake and each player basically get the same overall ‘guild’ to work from with cosmetic differences. It’ll be easier to pick up and play than using a drafting system and a mess of unique characters, as much as I sorta hate giving that up. Maybe I’ll still figure out some way to have ‘advanced’ heroes you can recruit further into a game.

Been tweaking Ether’s design a bit more, especially trying to come up with a weapon that suits her. The one thing I kind of had ‘set’ from the start in designing around a Guardian Legend inspired game was having a weapon that could believably perform a variety of different attacks without like, transforming or something, so a ‘gunblade’ felt like the best pick for the main character to wield. I’d sort of like to go with a system where you can swap parts to change shot types and keep spells as special attacks for the second button. I guess the thing is I basically have two ‘split’ stories at this point (see; Radona’s perky looks), one bright and goofy and another that’s darker (Ether having to rescue her besieged homeland from a family she never knew she had) and they’re like, similar enough that doing both and pretending they’re unrelated would be strange. Oh well. GameMaker stuff is on the burner behind Irrgarten for now.

Primary Sidebar