itch.io

"that chain of events is a matter of historical interest, not co-authorship" bars

so interested in the stories manifesto - i'm realizing now that several of my favorite media came to be so because of general concepts or setting; those broad strokes were inspiring enough for me to get my head racing with headcanons or other stories that could exist its universe or more possibilities of what the story could be. i had previously attributed this feeling to just "vibes," so this framing was quite helpful! (and reassuring that details in our own art dont have to matter for it to be interesting to ourselves or others)

love the comparisons on style and polish! it's really interesting to think of them as opposites on a spectrum, with stylishness coming from those rougher edges. that last point & the card on succeeding as a contemporary artist is inspiring me to make something worthy of a 1-star review...

(and i'm cosigning your ire on star ratings - quarter-stars are just ridiculous, why is that an option on storygraph, what are we doing. and why are we making rating rubriks!!!)

there's something very powerful about this phrase being paired with willem dafoe's headshots. i'll do my best mr. dafoe..!

yessss... yes!!

absolute banger!!!

"traumatize your characters, not yourself" how dare you and thank you for this callout

i deeply empathize... for me there's nothing more frustrating than wanting to create but not being able to output, or for your output to feel subpar for your standards. there have been years where i've made the best art of my life and in the next i couldn't pick up my tablet pen - it's hard not to see that as a personal failing, when i call myself an "artist" as a part of my identity but having what feels like nothing to show for it. it's difficult to reckon with these feelings because i'm able to recognize logically that Productivity as worth and the whole protestant work ethic is a worthless capitalist assessment, but it's another to believe it emotionally about yourself.

i'm not sure if i have the best advice, evidently because of everything i wrote above, but i think it's important to see these moments as slumps rather than permanent misdirections (as hard as that is to do in a depressive moment!). when i'm in creative slumps, i try to do something radically different - i started game dev because i was in a horrible art block and felt like my future as a digital illustrator was quite bleak; making games allowed me to focus on other areas of creativity, like programming and writing and audio work, and the medium of games is so vast and malleable that you can shift your focus away from wherever feels painful. i think it's also helpful to have "learning projects" - my first game was made more or less to get acclimated to using the godot engine; i wasn't too psyched about its result narratively, but i still see it as a worthwhile project because i have a much better idea of how to tackle godot's workflow in the future. switching that mentality from "i want to make something people like" to something tangible like "i want to learn about these specific features" made me hate it a lot less.

solidarity! i hate platitudes when i'm in depressive moments, but i believe you'll find a creative outlet that's worthwhile, even if not in games.

>RATE ZINE 5

better worlds are possible !!!

this was great! i got a bit stuck on the bathroom puzzle because the newspaper item in the inventory didn't show the right image sprite (it was the notebook from the game cartridge puzzle; i'm assuming that's a bug?), so i had to brute force through all those face options; but otherwise, i loved the spatial puzzles with the photographs, and i thought the hand puzzle was very clever :-] and the art was, obviously, fantastic!

aw this was so quaint! lovely music and artwork (mina's surprised sprite is soo good) - and i'm so sorry to corrinthe but i did laugh at the mistress assigning her as a personal sissyphus... someone save her 😔

so impressed with the environments from the default(?) tilesets, wow! i wonder why sulli survived the battle and why agapetus had that reaction... hmmm!!

soo blown away - the smile that curled on my face during the archived encyclopedia segment hasn't gone away. i hope the final version has even more hyperlinks 💞

i've been aware of the killer... since birth

so well done as always - your writing is just so evocative, and combined with the nostalgic american imagery crunched through harsh noisy filters, it all comes together to create this dense, biting atmosphere. very excited to see the final version :]

thank you!

i'm fascinated by the mechanics of this! i'm struggling a lot, though - by the time i get to the first boss fight with two angels per side, i'm drained of most of my damage-dealing moves and i'm starting the round with <10hp, and i'm too busy trying to keep my angels alive to make any progress. i never grew up with pokemon so that may be a factor lol x_x  i was really interested in the reddit threads and the conspiracy angles this was taking, i wish i could've seen more!

i'm very thankful that you uploaded a walkthrough with this! unfortunately i had to use it like a crutch - i was really confused on the language needed to activate the torch, though i'm already unfamiliar with the usual language of parsers. the highlight of this piece for me was the description of the setting and its atmosphere, the whole time i felt the coldness and overbearing desolation.

really happy to see someone use that poe track! as someone unskilled in parsers, i really appreciated the "think" command with the escalating hints. i was so lost on the crossword! i thought the "4-letter" clue was bait due to the "friend is a  four letter word" track, lol. it was interesting seeing the shufflecomp playlist exist as diegetic songs in-game, i thought it was clever how they were used in practice.

this game did a fantastic job of making every food item feel as bland and unappealing as possible. i liked the art and the main menu track, they have a very distinct vibe!

interesting game! on my first attempt, i didn't know that 'ctrl +/ctrl -' were shortcuts for sending 'go up/go down' commands, so when trying to change the zoom of the webpage i completely flooded my command history with '[garry] took a few steps in the wrong direction.' this made me incorrectly think the mystery was about this character's changing name rather than what was proposed in the exposition that i yeeted off the page 💀. i was able to appreciate what was actually happening on a second go around! apologies for being comically inept at parsers, lol

yess another edguy song! a smaller detail but i thought it was interesting how the first-person pronouns were capitalized, a subtle way to communicate the self-importance/arrogance of the protagonist to the player through the text's styling.

this was lovely! so quaint, so relatable. the vignettes were very effective in their brevity - the scenes with the doe were a pleasure to read. may we all have does in our futures. great work!

yes!!!! this was so good!!! the story by itself with the underground film piracy was already extremely compelling to me but the way that it was told through interlinked blog posts was very special. we need more wikipedia-likes. i loved the bit about how the audience made up their own lyrics and choreo to the censored film scene, i just find that really cute. i appreciated reading the writeup on how the songs inspired the project - what a fascinating backstory to "55 Days at Peking." amazing work!!

my god the whiplash i got seeing seeing kaito danganronpa. surprisingly very grounded given that premise, i was pleasantly surprised with direction this took. you captured the vibe of the song quite well!

i loved the hypertext - the worldbuilding footnotes of the vampire mechanics was a treat to read (a highlight of the piece for me), and cycling through the names at the end was such a cool interactive element. a very strong mood throughout. well done!

all the visual gags were great, i smiled so wide at the mid-game character questionnaire. i got elena :-) even without the context of the characters or the stories they come from, the dialogue captured their personalities so well. i loved how the writing and visuals all contributed to this uncanny atmosphere. this feels like a perfect representation of how it felt participating in shufflecomp this year (compliment)

this is the greatest compliment ever. im going to hang this on my fridge. thank you <3

it tickles me a lot to see that death's dynamic shroud track in use <3 this was great! so stylish and angsty. i loved finding the hidden footnotes i missed on my first playthrough. great use of hypertext elements!

thank you for the kind words, i appreciate it! yes i did all the artwork :]

thank you so much! i was so touched seeing your full review :') <3

aw thanks!  very kind of you <3 ^_^

thank you so much!

thank you! i'm glad you liked it!

i finally got around to reading this - i definitely see the similarities, especially with the voice of the narrator. very interesting read! thanks for the rec :)

reading your theory made me smile so wide - i'm beyond touched that you would take the time to engage with my project like this. thank you so much for your words <3 scp/creepypasta was certainly an inspiration for this :]

im touched to hear you like the writing, its easily the part i struggle with the most. thank you :-)

the two of them trying to operate a scooter standing on top of each other, ugh!! adorable. so sweet.

this is outstanding!! i love the feel of the mechanics - hovering off of a word and seeing it morph into yet another potential translation from its click cycle felt like micro-revelations. seeing those connections form in real time was electrifying. i recently started learning japanese and i got very excited that i could recognize a few of the chinese characters, lol. love love love

i love the stark black and white visuals, especially with the displacement shader during the shaking hands bit - reinforces the unease of the piece. delightfully indulgent in its angst. very cool work!