25/09/2024
The end of September is here! What a… unique month this was!
In today's blog, I'm going to talk about: Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance, Phoenix Club News, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Shining Diamond’s Demonic Heartbreak, Minecraft and much more!
Spoiler Alert for those topics!
Let's dance!
WEBSITE UPDATES
Crashed Club Days 51-75 are Now Complete!
Yup, you heard me right! Completely and utterly finished! It's already up on the website in fact.
You can go read it by clicking on the writing tab or here!
I decided to make a few changes to the structure of this story for this batch, for example, there's a lot more images from Rimworld itself! I think they do a good enough job in showing what's going on sometimes. We even have the introduction of the mysterious “L.” villain! I wonder who that could be!
This story is always a fun one to just jump in, write whatever things I like or find funny and put it out. A very comfortable writing project!
As for cut content, there isn't anything to discuss about. Pretty much 99% of the things I thought ended up in the story, so there's not much to discuss here!
This made me want to get back into Rimworld again however… The temptation is really strong to get 100+ hours addicted to this game again…
Anyways, days 76-100 will come after I finish the current batch of Phoenix Club Chapters!
Actually, talking about that:
The Next 4 Chapters of Phoenix Club are Being Made!
I already have notes and a cheat sheet for this series with the information of these 4 chapters! (This means I can start making the first draft for all these chapters!)
These next chapters are going to be the moment I decide to spread my wings as a writer and try to tell a more deep and compelling narrative… Well, I have been setting this up for the past 2 chapters, so I guess this is the moment where I actually fly?
Either way, there were some minor spelling mistakes and a few corrections to the Chapter 2 Panel because I forgot to tell Scrimblo a few details (sorry!) because I was too shocked and dead from seeing the masterpiece they made!
The new chapters will be made during the course of October and probably released towards the end of the month… probably! Seiko and friends will face their first challenge soon, look forward to it!!!
Unnamed Story Continues to Progress!
There were a few more developments after the first draft was written!
I’m still thinking of the characters' design, colors and clothes, but most of that stuff I already have a general idea on what I would like to see/ what would fit the story. I had plans of adding a lot of world building that would serve no actual purpose to the story being told, and after talking to my editor, I decided to put these ideas out of the main story for the sake of pacing.
The story is based on a fictional board game, so I got the idea of implementing world building via cards and a virtual manual! All this stuff is still very early in the thought process, but I think this would be a cool way to show lore, trivia and world building for this fantasy world! Of course, it would all be optional things. I’m not gonna hide important information to the story behind this system, I will still explain relevant things when they come up. But for all the minor stuff, the virtual manual is the key!
I also calculated that this story will be about 15~ chapters long! Not a huge story but still a fun one.
My plans are to get to this story after I’m done with the 100 days of Crashed Club… so expect this to be a thing next year!
There were a few other minor improvements to some random pages here and there, and the addition of a new secret I’m still working on! Aside from that, that’s everything new for the website!
Have a unrelated art for making through this segment:
“Pumo Pumo.”
This Fumo Template was of great help to make this!
With Crashed Club done and progress being made towards Phoenix Club, I guess one could say that I accomplished every goal I had for this month! Which I’m very happy about!
MANGA OF THE DAY
JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken: Crazy Diamond no Akuryouteki Shitsuren
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Shining Diamond’s Demonic Heartbreak
Made by Kouhei Kadono & Tasuku Karasuma.
(Another Jojo review? Seriously Pudding??)
(Yes.)
Synopsis: Ten years after Dio’s defeat by the Stardust Crusaders, Hol Horse finds himself accepting a request from an old lady about finding her lost parrot. With the help of Oingo, they figure the parrot is in a town called Morioh all the way in Japan!? Hol Horse now has to go all the way to Japan to not break that lady’s promise, after getting there he ends up meeting a boy with an interesting hairstyle…
Art and presentation: You know how detailed and iconic the Jojo artstyle is, so I don’t need to delve into too much detail on this… but it’s worth noting that this manga’s artist is not the original author!
Tasuku Karasuma, creator of No Guns Life, is the artist for this one and they do a fantastic job in replicating the Jojo artstyle while also putting her own spin on it! If I were to put into words what I think about it, I would say it aims to be a little less detailed and more “Animey” but still keeping the identity of Jojo. Here, better if I show you an example:
(JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Shining Diamond’s Demonic Heartbreak)
(JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run)
There’s a lot of depictions of genuine fear and terror in this manga that Karasuma pulls off with absolute perfection. You can feel their fear! The character’s expressions, the lighting during these scenes, the sweat, the EVERYTHING!
This manga’s art is top notch!
Why you should read it: Jojo is amazing. That’s all you need…
Okay, to be fair, people who don’t know Jojo will have a very hard time getting into this one as it HEAVILY depends on the information from part 4 and prior. But hey, for those who are familiar with the series, there’s a lot to love in here!
We see a lot of returning characters from other parts and get a whole nother light on Hol Horse’s allegiance to Dio. All his followers were completely terrified by Dio, often being forced to do terrible things just to avoid upsetting this creature that claimed to be “Superior to Humans”. The story explores these themes, this trauma that still lurks all these years later. Many of them have scars from that time and still see him in their dreams & nightmares, that genuine fear…
It’s easy to lose yourself in the dread of life, but we can’t let this fear control everything we do. Not bowing down to your fears and doing what you find right, always following the rules of your heart, that’s how an Emperor truly acts like. You're the lord of your own soul!
That’s why you should read it!
Score: 4/5! An amazing companion piece for Jojo fans, harder to recommend to other people.
(Side note: I know I said I wanted to review more light novels, I was under the impression that this one was a light novel but ended up not being! Well, it has a light novel, but I couldn’t find a way to get it so I decided to go with the manga version!
Light novel next month I promise!)
LIFE UPDATES
The Alliance is Here to Save the Day!
Here at last, the newest game in the Kingdom Rush series: Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance!
In this game, the forces of Linirea and the Dark Army form a Alliance to defeat a greater evil that has been slowly developing in the background since the end of the second game: The Occult!
A common enemy!
I must start this review by praising the game's story! The plot in this game is much more involved compared to previous games. Normally, most stages were just obstacles or paths to get to the final objective, but here they are so much more than that. I would say 80% of the stages of the game relate to the story and have a good story reason to exist. They feel much more important than previous entries!
Dark and Light fight together!
Now for the gameplay, I'm happy to say that it's MUCH more balanced than what Vengeance was at launch!
Of course, there's still a few cases of one tower being better than another one, but it’s much of a wash as it was in the previous game. Even if a tower falls a little compared to another, it's still fun to use and play with it! I found myself constantly switching heroes and towers to face particular challenges, signs of great balance!
Towers and Heroes have clear weaknesses and strengths which ties in nicely with this game's new feature of bringing 2 heroes to a stage!
The game also has a new mechanic called “Allegiance”! (I don't know the name of the mechanic, this was just the name I gave it!)
This game is about 2 enemies teaming up together to defeat a greater evil, so the game introduces a mechanic that separates the hero and tower roster in categories: Linirea Army and Dark Army.
Many upgrades give certain buffs depending on which category your hero is/ or how many towers from each side you brought to a stage.
For example, your heroes get more hp according to how many Linirea towers are built, meanwhile the Dark towers give damage instead. It's a really cool mechanic and very unique for this series!
This map has such a unique perspective!
The game was pretty hard on my playthrough as well. Enemies in this game are much more threatening than in previous games, and the waves in this game value much more “High Threat Targets” than “Tiny Minion Spam”, which is pretty refreshing.
Spoilers (Act 3 of the Game.)
This was a toughfy.
Boss fights are also pretty unique! Excluding the first boss, most of them have some kind of gimmick for you to play with while fighting the boss, which makes the fights more fun, even if a little easy.
Spoilers (Act 3 of the Game.)
This was so cool!
Graphics are better than ever before as well! This series always had amazing graphics and animations, but this game takes it to a whole nother level! Every stage is a fantastic art piece to look at! There’s a lot of easter eggs too!
Spoilers (Act 3 of the Game.)
My only complaints with this game is that it's not very replayable from a complete save file and the music, even if it's trying a little more, is still very tepid. Which are kind of minor complaints in the grand scheme of things!
This is a fantastic entry in this franchise and I can't wait to see what future updates have to offer!
Spoilers (Ending.)
He’s back to his old tricks again.
Deadlocked!
I’m still playing this with friends!
The game is still fun, but I’m starting to see that players and friends are getting much better than me, which is kind of turning me away from this game…
I don’t have too much time during the day to play video games, so it’s not really feasible for me to catch up with them in terms of skill and game knowledge. So my personal fun with this game has been going down, very slowly. I still enjoy it, playing with different characters is very fun and learning the game is very rewarding! But it's still hard to catch up with everyone when I have so little time to play and I don’t like to stick with one game all the time. Such is the life of a worker I guess.
Can you tell what’s going on?
The Dark Castle Rises!
My project to build a big dark castle in Minecraft (with the Better Than Adventure Mod.) continues!
Check out some of the progress:
This was a screenshot before I went hard on building it! The base of the structure!
I spent 2 sundays makin this castle and here how it turned out:
Pudd’s Dark Evil Castle!
The castle is still not done, well, it is done, but now it just needs the minor stuff to make it pretty! I plan on doing that next sunday!
This little project has become something to look forward to doing during a Sunday, which is quite fun.
Pudding and Friends Rob a Bank (Clickbait!) (Not Real!)!
Me and my friends played a little free game on Steam called One-armed Robber, which I was told it’s just Payday 2 but your character can only use one hand at all times. I have never played any Payday game, so you're gonna have to take my friend's word for it!
Either way, the game was a pretty funny one. Having only one hand means you have a much tougher time carrying equipment for your heist, it also leads to comedic moments where you have to sometimes throw stuff around to bring the tools necessary for the situation, which is great for a fun multiplayer game!
But the biggest problem with the game is that it asks you to grind or pay for more content… I get the pay part, the game is a free indie game after all. But the game wants you to grind the same missions multiple times to unlock weapons, perks and many other stuff which is a bad thing when your game is not really that replayable. Once you play a mission, you pretty much see everything it has to offer, the content doesn’t really change when replaying.
Give it a try with your friends, it was a pretty funny game, but don’t expect to be a very replayable game.
One-armed army!
The only goal I had for this segment was to finish my playthrough of the Kingdom Rush franchise, and with Alliance done, that goal is complete! What a great franchise of games!!
That’s everything for this segment!
SONG OF THE DAY
There was no other option for the song of the day segment than the masterpiece Toby Fox just decided to show in his Undertale 9th Anniversary Newsletter.
The song of the day is Power of NEO (Unfinished) by Toby Fox!
Power of NEO was one of my favorite songs from Undertale, one of many actually, and I always dreamed what it would sound like if it was expanded into a real boss fight song… seems like Toby also had the same thought and decided to experiment with this track, eventually evolving it into BIG SHOT. I do believe that song is Toby’s greatest single song he has ever made and it’s so fascinating to see the years of development it took to get to that point. Amazing work Mr. Fox!
By the way You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!
And that’s everything for this blog update and month!
This month was quite the unusual one, felt like time both stopped and went too fast...
Either way,
See you next month!
Have a nice day Traveler!
15/09/2024
Helo!
Half way through september! So far it has been quite the unusual month for me, nothing is moving at a linear pace!
Regardless, I’m here with a new blog update!
The topic for this one include: Crashed Club & New Story, Phoenix Club Panels and Improvements, Various Gacha Games and Puddtale and Few Minor Things!
Spoiler Alert for those topics!
Let’s begin!
WEBSITE UPDATES
Crashed Club (slow) Progress!
Helo! It’s me Pudding, the person that was supposed to be done with Crashed Club writing this week!
…
I’m not…
I got distracted and shifted focus to something internally different. I was more focused on making a first draft of the new story I want to tell after Crashed Club!
It’s the story and characters still don’t have names settled yet, but I enjoy what I wrote so far!
Anyways, I’ll talk more about that in the next segment, this is a Crashed Club segment!
Progress has been slow, not non existent! I managed to write about 5 days since last time, so I only have 10 days to go, which should be a walk in the park. Most of the art is already made, so that makes things easier too!
Talking about that, check this one out I made for this batch with your favorite ginger girl named Pudd:
“I-I-I am not feeling so well… melting…”
Mysterious New Story on the Horizon
As I said before, this story still doesn’t have names pindown, but what I can share is the general premise and the setting for it!
The setting for the story will be a fantasy world with knights, elfs and a dragon!
…
Yeah, sounds generic, but I think I can make the things on it interesting. It’s a very small world with cool lore that I’m still thinking of.
As for the story, it focuses on a group of 4 friends who, by complete accident, find themselves in this unknown fantasy world. After regaining their footing, they agree to go back home in 4 days, taking this opportunity to explore this new world… but they have to be careful. This fantastical world is new and exciting, but they still have to go back home at some point… right?
That’s all I’m comfortable sharing for now, the story is still on the first draft, heck, not even my editor has read it yet! But as I said, I like what I wrote so far and more ideas just keep cropping up for the story, I can’t wait to write it! Which I will after Crashed Club, it will fill the void that is going to create, so I don’t write only one project at a time.
Look forward to it!
Some Other News!
There were some updates to the links page, which was a bit sad to do because there were so many buttons that no longer had their websites… It's sad to see websites go.
As per my good friend Miya request, I updated the font and made improvements to all my writing projects pages. They are now better and more readable!
Talking about that, Phoenix Club chapter 1 & 2 panels have been added! Go check them out by Clicking Here!
I love how these turned out, Scrimblo and I had some good back fourths during the making of them and I enjoy the final product a lot! Please make sure to visit Scrimblo’s website and give them a lot of love! They are super talented and a very great person!!!
And that’s everything for this segment!
LIFE UPDATES
Dropping Arknights!
After picking this game up again at the start of the year just to pass time, and now, 6 months later, I’m finally dropping it!
These images were taken almost a month ago!
It wasn’t my first time playing Arknights, I played the game before years ago, but recently (6 months ago.) I needed a game that would be just a good time passer, so I decided to pick it up after realizing Blue Archive is dreadfully boring. I tried to connect to my account I stopped using long ago, but then memories came back to me about it… the reason I stopped at first was because my account was lost and I had no ways to recover it. So I just decided to use the “new” account from years ago that I made at the time when I lost the previous one.
The game was uh… VERY overwhelming for a new player who has forgotten how everything works. Took me about 4 months to get the hang of things and create a routine. It’s worth mentioning that I wasn’t playing it for this game’s story, I was there only for the gameplay, and I had a good amount of fun with it.
Since last time I played, the game added a bunch of new content, including a new roguelike gamemode where you go through 5 floors with a bunch of stages, encountering random events, recruiting operators and collecting powerful items to help you on your journey to stop the final boss. It was pretty fun to go through, even if frustrating sometimes because of the low amount of operators I had, definitely my favorite addition to the game!
Oh yeah, talking about operators, check out the most important operators I had:
High profile characters.
I did plan on leveling up all my 4 stars units, but I dropped the game before getting halfway done with that goal…
A big cast of individuals!
But that doesn’t matter, because I got the alternate version of one of my favorite characters!
Hibiscus is the best!
Original for comparison! (Not really because she has a skin in this one.)
I mainly stopped playing the game from just fatigue, the game a TERRIBLE daily & farming routine. Loves to waste your time as much as possible and demands your attention twice a day, not good! What didn’t help was that the two other roguelike campaigns weren’t as fun as the one I completed. So, with a dreadful routine and the roguelike not being as fun anymore, I just decided to quit.
This was my profile at the end:
The finale!
Will I ever come back to Arknights? If I have to be honest, probably not.
Would I recommend it for the gameplay? I mean, kinda yes and no? The game is a gacha, so it’s really grindy and slow when you reach the endgame. If you don’t mind the waste of time, there’s quite a lot you may enjoy.
Plus I heard the story is amazing. I haven’t read it myself, so you're taking someone else’s word for this one.
Going Forth to Natlan
Natlan just came out guys! As a big fan of how the Fontaine Archon Quest turned out, I had moderate expectations for the story of this new region themed around war.
So what did I think about it? I think this is the writing team for Genshin Impact at its peak!
It’s quite clear with this one that the game’s story improved A LOT with time to reach this point. This quest has a lot to love!
The Archon Quest for Natlan explores the culture of war and competition they have, we see the tribes, their daily lives, culture and their constant fights and struggles agaisn’t the abyss. They are the closest to them after all. To be more specific, the story shows how much the habitants of this region have to sacrifice and overcome just to survive, while never losing their spirit. The quest gives you a lot of great reasons to care about the region and its habitants, and it’s never afraid to show the consequences this struggle causes sometimes, which is great!
Kachina’s story is also great! I love that we got to see her grow to her full potential after some encouragement!
We are all so proud of you Kachina.
The NPCs this time around have much more unique and distinct designs, feeling more like actual characters! I was even touched by one of these NPCs' stories…
Vichama was one of these warriors that fought the abyss with his best friend Mallko, he was the brains while his friend was the muscle of the duo. But one day during battle, Vichama got an injury that forced him to go back to camp, leaving the group and his friend with no strategy at all… which lead to their demise by abyss. To this day, he still blamed himself for that tragedy thinking “If only I pushed myself that day… he could’ve been here right now.”
It’s sad, but this is the reality of Natlan, they have to fight to survive. We later delve into the abyss and actually get to meet for a brief time the spirit of Mallko, who helps us as guide and even attempts to protect us against the abyss… even after death, the spirits of the people of Natlan don’t falter.
This region is full of these types of stories, even the Archon has a tragedy of their own. We still don’t know much about it, but it seems like she had to leave her family behind to become the Pyro Archon.
She had a happy family…
The fight she had with Capitano was cool too.
Very cool fight by people who start flying.
As for all the other characters that the traveler meets and talks to, they are also cool and have a reason to be there. Full of distinct personalities, relationships and beliefs which is great to see.
Let’s see if the team can keep up with this great writing! Fontaine was a 4 hit 1 miss with their 5 act story and so far Natlas is 2 for 2!
As for non-story stuff, I’m saving up all my wishes for Mavuika (Pyro Archon) and her weapon that will come… in the future. I don’t know when, I don’t look at leaks.
I haven’t begun exploring the region yet, I had a backlog of things to get to before getting to that region. But it’s safe to say that Natlan and the countless improvements they made to the game with this version has revived my interest for this game again. (Deja vu anyone?)
Can’t wait to see where it goes!
Honkai: Star Railing!
Version 2.5 is here! And I haven’t gone through even half of it’s content!
… Mostly due to laziness…
I'm yet to play the main story quest for this patch, instead, I’m spending most of my time playing the new event “Luminary Wardance” and seeing its story because it has one of my favorite characters on it: Luka!
The premise of the event is that Luka goes to compete in the legendary Wardance in the Luofu, and I’m surprised how deep they explore his character. We go through his struggles, both physical and mental, with being really far away from home and trying to against all of his opponents. There’s also the mystery of the previous Belobog and his attempts to spread awareness to his planet’s catastrophe… it’s all so endearing and great!
Luka Vs The Beauty!
Luka is basically a shonen protagonist and he’s so likable in this event!
I’m still not done with the event so I will stop here. I’m still gonna play it through at my own pace! (Procrastinating…)
As for funny gamble plans, I don’t really have any characters on my wish list, so I’m probably going to pull for Topaz’s lightcone, because I’m in heavy need of good hunt lightcones, and if I get the chance to, maybe get her E1 too! Since I have lost my 50/50 in both banners, I have guaranteed odds to get what I want.
Only problem is that I need about 150 pulls to guarantee I get both! Which I only have 60 at the time of writing… wish me luck!
Kingdom Rush (Re)Vengeance
The rush continues as we go through Vengeance, the game that we play as villain of the first game!
Its Veznanover…
Easily one of the most divisive games of the franchise too.
This aims to shake up the formula established by the previous games, instead of having 4 towers that later specialize into 2 others with upgrades, in this one, we have 15+ different towers that we pick before entering a stage!
There’s a great variety of towers to pick from too, from barracks that thrive on body blocking to slower minions with high armor meant to tank bigger enemies and even a freaking laser beam that deals continuous damage to a single target! There’s plenty of options for basically any scenario you encounter on a stage…
Big ice creature!
That would be the case at least, but the game suffers from some balance issues…
Some towers completely overshadow others in utility and damage output in their respective roles… at least when I first played. I saw that the game received some balance patches over the years, so maybe this issue is better now. I don’t really know.
A lot of talk for just being a frog.
But what I do know is that I used a mod called ReVengeance for this playthrough! That mod aimed to rebalance all the game’s content and stages to make things more fun! And I’m kinda split in half with this one…
The mod’s rebalances to enemies, heroes and towers were great, that part of the mod was fantastic, many heroes and towers now shine brighter than before and have fun playstyles!
My issue came with some of the level design. It suffers from the problem I like to call “Romhack Effect”, basically, the people that mod/ hack the game to make a new experience, sometimes get too focused on making something extremely hard and sacrifice a more casual experience. This mod’s level design suffers from this, levels sometimes are REALLY tough if you don't use a certain combination of towers while playing perfectly.
I got stuck on a stage in the main campaign levels that was just brutal difficulty after I have already gone through hell and back to get there. I didn’t want to concede and just watched a youtube video on how to beat it because that’s boring, so instead I modified the mod to remove all the custom content related to stages and wave design, only keeping the rebalances. Which really improved my experience overall!
There were a lot of hiccups with sudden power spikes as enemies are vastly different than expected for vanilla, but I still had a lot of fun playing with the rebalanced towers and heroes!
The game’s story is also cool and fun, playing as the villain and going through his journey to take over the world and all the people that cause him problems is very enjoyable too. We even get to see many familiar faces!
Alric is back and cooler than ever!
Another thing worthy of praise is the boss fights! They are top notch this time around, some even have unique gimmicks to them and are actually threats to your defense instead of being a damage check at the end of a stage! The final boss fight is very climatic too!!
This one doesn't really count as it wasn't a “boss fight” but it was cool to see Sha’tra back!
The game OST, similar to Origins, is very tepid. The songs don’t really try to stand out like the previous games, sometimes just fading to the background, which is kinda sad. But it’s not the end of the world, the OST for a Tower Defense game should be the last of your priorities.
Oh yeah, the art! Oh man, the art for this game is gorgeous! All games in this franchise have fantastic graphics, but Vengeance takes the next step in quality and makes absolutely amazing animations and art!
This looks amazing for just a tower defense game!
In my opinion, if you put this game in the woods, it’s just a bunch of code laying on the ground, nobody knows if it’s a good game or worth the price… that’s what I would say if I was dumb and stupid!
This game is totally worth the price! Even despite the poor vallina balancing, which may be fixed already, there’s a lot of content here that I’m sure many will enjoy! It's a good game!
Also, it's the first game in the franchise to have Paid DLC…
I played through the 2 currently available DLC and…
Hammerhold is cool, I liked that we got to see the desert again and fight against the heroes of those lands, but it does suffer from being a “free update+” problem. This campaign is paid, the standards are higher now, and this just feels like a free update with extra stuff added to it. The second DLC however…
Pirate Kings is Vengeance at its absolute PEAK! You go through 5 stages, each having their own set of unique enemies and a dangerous boss at the end, only time to fight all of them together in one big final stage! Everything about this DLC was great and well throughout, super fun! If you are going to play the game, definitely pick this DLC up!
The final pirate king!
And now the next game in the franchise is Alliance, which was released a couple of months ago. I can’t wait to play it after seeing the quality of the Pirate Kings DLC!
Wooooooo! Another cool cliffhanger!
Pudd found herself inside a cave! A Under Tale!?
It’s Undertale's 9th anniversary, so my good friend Miya decided to make a simple mod that adds Pudd into the game!
GUYS LOOK ITS PUDD!
. . .
Except that was not it at all! They made a whole 20 minute adventure that, for some reason, took me at least an hour and a half for me to complete! I have a skill that I like to call the “Streamer/ Let's Player” skill, which is the ability to transform short experiences and games into hours of content!
But that's besides the point, the mod was full of easter eggs and fun events related to the stuff we constantly meme about with a heart warming message at the end. It was really cute and very much fun! It was way more high effort than I thought it was going to be, Miya put a lot of effort into it and I can tell they had a lot of fun making it.
Pudd jailed forever…
I wish I was as cool and smart as Miya is to make something this cool…
It's likely that no one other than me will ever play this mod, sooooooooo… Enjoy the screenshots!
Deadlocking!
Been playing this here and there with friends. The game is still a lot of fun and the fact that it is still changing a lot every 2 weeks makes things even more exciting.
Lots of content to look forward to!
The balancing issues are starting to kinda creep up, but we can mostly chalk these hiccups up to the game still being in alpha.
Still super fun Moba to play with friends!
Defeating the big ball again.
And that's everything for this segment!
SONG OF THE DAY
The pick for today is the inspiration for the creation of my new upcoming story!
The Song of the Day is the cover of Good-bye sengen by WonderlandsxShowtime! I have been listening to it non stop while writing that story and it was a great source of motivation for it! Also I do enjoy the original Vocaloid version of this song, but I just prefer the energy from this cover.
And that’s everything for this blog update!
See you next time!
Have a nice day traveler!
05/09/2024
Helo!
September, the month that really feels like the 7th month but it’s actually the 9th month, is here! Lots of things are going to happen during this one, but let me slow down a bit before I get too ahead of myself!
This blog will feature: Interloper Page Finalized, Crashed Club Progress, Kingdom Rush Origins, Tropical-Rouge Precure, Minecraft Mod Search and Deadlock!
Quite a lot isn't it? Let's begin right away!
WEBSITE UPDATES
The Interloper is Fully Finished!
All the final touches and additions have been made to the page, so it’s now completely finished! It was even fully optimized for mobile by yours truly, somehow!
Go check it out if you haven’t already: Click Here to Interlope!
Do you like the fake bootup menu? That one is courtesy of Miya, they made it and I asked for permission to modify it and use it for this website project, so go visit their website!
I had a lot of fun finding and adding all the tiny details & noises to the main page, I even went the extra mile by adding a whole secret! On that topic, I plan on updating the pages to add a few more secrets and more content as the ARG continues, but those plans are pretty far in the future.
Overall, I love how these pages ended up looking like at the end! Making all this gave me a lot of confidence that maybe one day, I can discard the template I have been using for the main pages of my website for so long! My biggest issue was making it all mobile friendly, but after this test that I somehow managed to pass, I think I can actually do it!
Crashed Club is Being Worked On!
I’m not too far behind pace after all!
I began working on this project again and have been making good progress! I have currently finished writing 10 days of the 25 I have to work on for the next release! The 15 other days will be done by next week I think, it’s not a project that consumes a lot of time to write and mostly for fun, so that deadline is a pretty accurate one.
Using Rimworld as a base for story telling turned out to be a very good and fun thing, I’m able to contextualize and create character motivations with seemingly random events that happen in the game. It's quite the unique experience.
Oh yeah, Miya agreed to make a piece of art for one of the scenes in this batch, so look forward to that!
In the meantime, have this unrelated drawing:
The cardboard says “hi” to you
There were some minor things added too, such as the Hatsune Miku pixel arts I made for both Birthday and 39 day, game shelf updates and some other minor minor stuff!
As for what you can expect this month, let’s see…
You can expect me to put day 51 - 75 of Crashed Club on the website and maybe (more like for sure.) Phoenix Club progress for chapter 5 & 6! Yup, Phoenix Club will come soon and I can’t wait to write it!
That’s everything you can expect and for this segment!
LIFE UPDATES
Time to see the origins of all this conflict with Kingdom Rush Origins!
Released in 2014, this game is the third in the series and serves as a prequel for the conflict we see in the original and sequel!
The story is about the evil Malicia and her rise to power after her assassination attempt on the last princess in a far away kingdom.
Okay, if you see the previous blog updates, I never really delved into the story of these games, so why am I doing this now? Well, because I think this one has a pretty good and engaging story!
This story has a clear start and ending point, has consequences for the events and moments that feel legitimately epic! Such as the rescue of the princess that happens to be a certain hero in Kingdom Rush and the evil threat that dwarfs awaken by accident that almost exterminate their people.
Swift, like the wind.
That's not to say the first and second games have bad stories, far from that. They just don't do much to stand out like this one does.
But enough about the story, time for the most important part: Gameplay!
This game follows the same formula from the previous 2 games, but this is the moment they try more unique and weird things.
Here's some ideas unique to this game from the top of my head:
Barracks have ranged attacks as base for their tower, the meteor power was changed to a lighting attack, tower specializations tend to completely restructure how a tower works, enemies have more unique gimmicks and dangerous abilities and the list goes on…
Arachbogician? Spidermancer? Actually I like that last one.
Some gimmicks are fun to play with and against, but there are a few misses here too. But by far one of the best additions to the game was the Hero Spell system!
Each hero has a unique spell that you can command, similar to the meteor/ lighting spell! Spawning an army, insta killing a specific enemy and even elemental tornado! This mechanic adds so much to the hero system and it's super fun to play with.
(By the way, the hero spell system didn't really work well with 2 heroes mod, you could only have 1 of the spells. Sad that I couldn't use the second hero spell…)
The final leader of evil.
I like Origins a lot, this game is a lot more interactive than the previous ones. With all the map hazards you have control over and the enemies having more engaging gimmicks, this game keeps you at your toes constantly… even if it feels overwhelming at times.
But I do have a few problems with this game, the bosses don't really feel special or threatening, I mean, the game doesn't even have a boss fight theme?? Actually, the game's OST is really weak this time around, feels really muted and not impressive.
Three of each hero again!
In the end, I think I like this game over the first game, which may be considered a sin to most die-hard fans… but oh well!
The game is great as well, this trilogy is great! If you want to get into tower defense games, these are the games you should look for!
Next up is Kingdom rush Vengeance, which is also modded, but not with an extra hero per stage. This one I decided to use a popular mod that rebalances the game and makes it more fresh and fun!
Very lucky too is that this game is going to have a newly announced DLC and it's right around the corner! So I have to beat the game before the DLC drops and completely breaks the mod!
Wish me luck!
The Rise of Vez'nan.
So tropical, so fun! Tropical-Rouge Precure!
I started watching this season of Precure because of a recommendation via the guestbook! Thank you for signing by the way!
This season is fairly enjoyable so far, even if it's too formulaic.
It’s your typical magical girl anime where it's a slice of life and the main cast usually fight a bid bad at the end of the episode that solves the issues for said episode/ teaches a lesson, but this time with a tropical theme! I’m 10 episodes in, and it doesn't seem like the show will stray much outside this formula’s path… but it's not bad though!
The characters are very fun, expressive and likable, they all also bring a different kind of energy to each scene! The OST for this season is also fantastic, the whole topical theme sounds really nice and the battle theme rocks!
Right now the show is a solid 3 out 5, but let’s see if it surprises me a bit more in the future!
Also the Precure names are quite funny, like, “Cure Papaya” and “Cure Flamingo”??
This group is very funny!
The difficult and peerless Minecraft Mod Search to find whatever the heck I was trying to find!
Recently, I have been getting the itch to play a modded version of Minecraft, so naturally, I went on the hunt to play modpacks. Ended up trying one that I felt that I would like that I don't remember the name anymore, but it didn't end well… I got bored very fast.
I also quickly realized that these modpacks seek to add more complexity to the game that already had a lot of stuff, and that wasn't what I was really looking for. It wasn't scratching the itch.
So I decided to go the opposite way, what if I looked for mods in older/ beta versions of Minecraft?
So I went on the search and ended up finding a mod called Better Than Adventure. The mod aims to expand the game, but still keeping the original spirit and vision of the beta intact!
Where's the kitchen?
I never really “played” the beta versions of Minecraft, so this was a very unique and hard experience for me! This version also doesn't have the end dimension, which means, the game is a true sandbox with no ending! Your goals and imagination are the real ending in this one! Something I think has been lost along the way of updating Minecraft...
Just speaking from experience here, many times when I played this game with friends, we would start a world and have fun at the start surviving and building, but then I would need to stop playing for the day and leave. By the next time I got to play again with them… they already killed the ender dragon, have all these end game gear/ loot with mending and billions of farms built… but yet, no actual buildings actually built. Then one person quits because they are bored, then another, then another and… an empty server with barely any memories, just a bunch of farms and overpowered gear.
What I want to say is that, the whole part of “Build anything you desire, your creativity is the limit!” part of Minecraft was lost with the introduction of all these set in stone goals the game gives to you. Now the game is more like “Maximize your gameplay and build the most efficient farms to get the best gear and mending on everything!” and that’s a bit sad in my opinion.
Of course, I’m not saying the Minecraft of now is bad by any means, I personally think it’s a pretty good game, or that you can’t make builds on it. What I’m saying is that it shifted focus and ended up losing the original vision of the beta versions. And I find it sad because this original vision is genuinely really fun!
The mod expands on this original vision by adding more things to explore and build with, but never really giving you an “end goal” to beat the game. Forcing you to make up your own goals and objectives. My current objective is to build a big castle and I’m gonna have a lot of fun building it!
Man, this abyss is crazy!
Btw, did you notice the Pudd skin? I made that myself! It looks a little crappy and has no shading at all, but I love it! Pudd is finally real in 3D!!!
Pudd as a small farmer, soon to be a castle ruler!
And now for the final topic and perhaps most difficult one I ever had to write: Deadlock!
Didn’t expect this one right?
First some history! I have been keeping up with this game since it was revealed that this game was going to be a billion different genres and was called Neon Prime, but then stopped because I had other things in my mind and projects to do. Then flash forward to the #FixTF2 campaign, out of nowhere, this game called Deadlock begins to be leaked to the public. Valve had the gall to make another generic live service game with hero shooter aspects, while all their other games were suffering from botting and hacking problems. The once renowned company, known for revolutionary and unique games, chasing trends. Felt like a real backstab… You can see I was very upset, one of my favorite games of all time was being destroyed by malicious individuals while the people that could do SOMETHING about this, wanted instead to let it die and make a new toy to play with. I would’ve absolutely despised this game if it was released while TF2 was dying… but that wasn’t how this story ended up looking like…
TF2 was fixed and bots have disappeared for over 2 months now with no sign of return. Ever since that time, we had the public announcement of Deadlock and… what to do now? TF2 is fixed, so I held no more resentment for the game.
Funny enough, I was one of the first of my friend group, if not the second, to receive a key for the game from steam, but I ended up not accepting for no clear/ fair reason. Only after a long amount of time passed, my friends tried it out by themselves saying it was pretty fun and a great game. After a bit of peer pressure and thought, I decided to leave the unfair reason to avoid it behind and tried out with friends and… it was fun, I must admit.
It’s a 3rd person Moba Hero Shooter, which is quite the unique traits to have for a game right off the bat. I’m still baffled how this game just functions so well, and plays really well, it really felt like Valve wasn’t chasing trends but actually making a great fun game again!
I find a lot of people complaining that this game doesn’t really know their target audience by not appealing to Hero Shooters or Moba fans, which they do have a point on, but a truly fair one. It’s clear to me that Valve wants to create a whole new genre by combining these two, and I personally think they have a working formula! But it’s a very tightrope to walk on…
These two genres very distincts strengths and weaknesses that need to be carefully looked over and designed. Things like the excess of stuns and silences that comes from Mobas might not fly with Hero shooter fans, and on the other side of the coin, Individual plays and skills from Hero Shooter fans are much harder to pull off in a Moba environment. Somehow, Valve pulled it off and made a very balanced and engaging game! At least for now, only the future will know if they can keep the balancing in this tightrope.
Other things I can praise about this game is the level design, the map is full of things to grind and make you more powerful, paired with the mobility you have, exploring the map feels very fun! The reward and deny souls mechanic feels really good, it’s fun to deny enemy money for hitting a skill shot!
Mid Fight bossing time!
Even with all that said, I don’t think I can play this game by myself. Mobas are not my thing and are far too complicated for my tiny brain. I need friends to help the learning curve and to counter some of the lack of knowledge, but once we get a match going, it's really hard to put the game down… so addictive…
I do recommend you to try this game out if you got a key for it, it’s very fun!
I also hope that one day we get leaks about how this game looked before it became Deadlock. In case you didn’t know, this Neon Prime is this game, but much earlier in development and with a much different artstyle… a Half-Life artstyle…
I’m not saying this game has a bad artstyle, nonono! This game has a very distinct style, I’m just being selfish by wanting to see what it looked like before.
Is this Mr. Old Umbrella Man?
Oh wait, it doesn’t matter anymore BECAUSE WE ARE GETTING LEAKS THAT IMPLY HL:X IS AN ACTUAL REGULAR PC HALF-LIFE GAME!!! HALF-LIFE 3 WE ARE SO BACK!!!!!!
Before closing this topic, I just want to apologize in case some of it didn’t make much sense. My feelings towards this game are very… complicated to say the least, so yeah, sorry about that!
It’s the end of this segment, but don’t worry, I didn’t forget to talk about Genshin Impact’s new region Natlan and the really well told story! I just decided to postpone it for the next blog update, because I didn’t get to explore much of Natlan at all and this update is already big enough!
As for what you can expert for this month…
I think I’m gonna finish my little playthrough of the Kingdom Rush Series and I think that’s it. I don’t have much in mind other than that, so I guess look forward to it!
SONG OF THE DAY
Since Origins didn’t have much for iconic songs, I’ll have to break the pattern in this update!
The Song of the Day is Viva! Spark!トロピカル～ジュ！プリキュア by Machico! This is probably my favorite Precure opening ever! I just love how bouncy and fun it is, the tropical themed instrumental ties it together with the whole season and I just love all the characters stop to just dance in this one (including villains!).
And that’s everything for this blog update!
See you next time!
Have a nice day traveler!
