Today’s deck is the Beginner’s Tarot: Luna’s Bear Edition.
We stan Luna Factory in this house, but if I had to levy one complaint, is that the thickness of the cardboard they usually use isn’t that good when the size of the cards is smaller.
Today’s reading advises that the key to my goals is to slow down a little and not be as on guard as I usually am which… I mean… yeah, I guess…
GOD today’s not a good brain day. Quite the opposite in fact.
The notification for my My Number hasn’t arrived yet and while I don’t TECHNICALLY have pressure, it’s like facing the whole thing with no visits around is making it all hit at once.
I drafted the transfer instructions for when everything is set, I did some other paperwork, I even tried again with opening a Rakuten bank account even though they rejected my application last time (but I did apply for a credit card at that time so I’m testing if NOT doing that makes it pass).
If nothing else, this whole year has instilled in me the importance of spreading assets through different banks as much as spreading them through different investments.
Anyway, USUALLY doing stuff like that relieves the stress a bit but not today sadly. And I’mma spoil something: My brain was in a bad enough state that when I went to bed after like 20 or so hours awake it was more out of a sense that I HAD to go to bed since I was dissociating so hard I couldn’t even feel sleepiness.
Hyperfocusing on Not Being Here if you will.
I don’t wanna leave things on a sour note since it wasn’t a BAD day and also this is just a regular part The Process. So instead let’s talk about some of the backlogged games I played while in that mental state.
参上っ！パイズリ忍者！～いぢわる VS 甘やかし～ is… so to be perfectly honest I don’t like that circle’s games as games. It’s a very specific gripe but they’re clearly made first with none of the assets and then the illustrations and whatnot are thrown in. The result is that it feels… off, like your brain tells you a scene should have more images than it actually does, it all also feels way too long-winded for it’s own good. But I’ll be damned if the author doesn’t have a good taste when it comes to comissioned artists which is why I return to begin with despite that reluctance.
It’s not like making the whole game with no illustrations is bad mind you (it’s the normal thing to do, if anything. Known by many names but the most familiar is “grayboxing” AKA “these gray boxes will be replaced by their actual assets later”). It’s more like either the images feel like a complete afterthrought in the design OR there’s not enough budget for all the illustrations needed.
Full disclosure, it’s also a circle with a specialty in games about being dominated by girls and I’m kinda allergic to games designed with that in mind because they feel like a chore to play. So the bias must be acknowledged there.
ぼくと夏のおねえちゃん達 is of the school of design of Amaenbo and its kind. A side-scrolling exploration about summer vacation ala Boku no Natsuyasumi where a boy has sex with all the girls in a rural town.
It was a very relaxed adventure and I put it second not because it was the second thing I played (this is all out of order) but because to prove the contrast to the earlier example where the illustrations can feel like an afterthought in the design, in this game it’s clear most of the girls work off the same redrawn base just with new clothes and such, but here it feels smart, like a clever use of resources.
It’s a very broad topic that I honestly find fascinating on the whole, really.
メス犬トレーニング by the circle 黒猫喫茶店. I LOVE all their games and eargerly await any release or announcement. Out of six of their games 4 have a recurrent theme of kemonomimi girls. Their first game was a fantasy RPG in a world with superhuman bunnygirls. Second was a raising sim with a NEET cow girl. The one released just before this one was another cow girl raising sim but with a bit more depth.
Sidenote, in the middle of that repertoire there’s a game about hypnotizing gyarus in an island resort, and after that one two girls and a foxgirl investigating a haunted school.
ANYWAY, with that context in mind, this current work has dog girls instead. You’re a cop, you get a bratty cop-in-training as your partner and you patrol around.
I really like what they attempted by using comic panels instead of a single CG, my only issue is that due to the resolution of the game (default RPG Maker stuff) you don’t see them too well, but I REALLY like the idea.
恥辱連鎖 is a minigame where you unlock extra scenes after certain goals. It’s in pre-rendered 3D rather than real time 3D but damn if it doesn’t look good.
Recently Kamichichi has been re-releasing their old games as big CG galleries which is a neat idea. I tried the Dark Apostle and Island Saga ones first.
Now we get to the fun one. Yami-Yami City. And when I say fun I mean interesting rather than engaging, sadly.
So the premise is simple: Get money, hire hookers, after you finish having sex with them you can get a bonus that will make other hookers cheaper or give you money bonuses elsewhere. The game has a bunch of girls and some are in buildings only unlocked after buying certain things.
Honestly, the first thing I thought about when putting the gameplay on paper is that the cycle itself CAN be engaging. An incremental game where you get money and spend it on girls and while you lose the money you’re basically buying a passive bonus that makes getting money or paying for more girls easier. The problem is that the process involves talking to a girl, going to the Love Hotel, selecting a room, having enough sex the affection bar fills, finish having sex, repeat. Also, every girl gives you the same bonuses so nothing’s stopping you from spamming the cheapest one for a while except the aforementioned time investment.
But no, the actually fascinating thing is the controls.
It’s a first person game where you move with WASD or the left click, move the camera by right-clicking and dragging the mouse, open the menu with Q, and interact with Enter.
It’s the most baffling control scheme I’ve encountered in a bit, and last time I did was also with someone that clearly had little to no experience with 3D games. And I find that so fascinating, either the author had very little experience with 3D games or didn’t parse what the control scheme in those was and yet decided to get Unity and a bunch of 3D models and make a 3D game with walking NPCs and such.
My game kept having an error where I had to reopen the game after talking with two girls or else I couldn’t do anything else, so I check and there was a patch. In the patch it mentions making walking faster, making the camera not be in the ground where every girl towers over you, and also you can now jump… with the X key.
Not Button, KEY.
Then the patch also added basically a moonjump that lets you jump to the top of the map for no reason. There’s no secrets but now you CAN.
I’m not even mad, I’m not even complaining. I worry so much about so many things when it comes to game production that I love encountering these cases where I can just feel the passion of “I’m gonna do this and not even God can stop me”.
Ultimately I’m not awful BAD thankfully. Brain is in a rough state for certain but honestly? Given the circumstances, I could be worse…