alias_sqbr

I've been watching a Let's Play of the classic, epic Japanese visual novel "Umineko: When they Cry" by Ryukishi07, and am currently up to Episode 5 of 8. I'm quite enjoying it but it's LONG. The LP is 168 episodes which are 30 minutes to two hours long.

I'll try and write a proper review when I'm finally done, since the story keeps reinventing itself, but so far it's a family drama and murder mystery with supernatural elements, which explores events from different angles in ways which cleverly play around with narrative, both from a storytelling perspective and as a way of exploring how people view the world and each other in different ways.

It's very much worth going into unspoiled if you are interested. But content warnings for violence and gore (mostly just text), suicide, child abuse (well written but harrowing), gender essentialism, male gazey character designs and and "joking" perviness (sometimes condoned by the narrative, though it's better about female characters than you might initially assume)

No unambiguous consent issues so far asides from some rape jokes but it feels like the kind of story where that could definitely be a Thing.

I'm watching Jokrono's let's play, which involves two young male gamers sometimes being thoughtlessly Unfortunate, especially about Japan. I'm sure there's others out there but this is the one I was recced and I'm overall enjoying it.

( Just cut for length, no spoilers )

During the family Christmas Zoom call Mum asked if I had any recs for historical computer games in which the protagonist does not commit acts of violence. When I asked what kinds of gameplay she enjoyed she just said "nothing too hard".

So here's what I came up with after exploring the historical and education tags on steam, if anyone has any recs or anti-recs please let me know!
( Read more... )

Something I've been poking at lately is the fact I genuinely don't seem to enjoy writing original prose fiction, even though I enjoy creating fanfic, original visual novels, visual novel adaptations, and original art (and fanart). I definitely don't think it's lacking as an artform! It just doesn't fit my brain so well to make it. And I guess to some extent I also am less drawn to it as a consumer of fiction? That's harder to untangle and not so much the point of this post but I'm going to ponder it later.
( Read more... )

Normally I wouldn't link to games I haven't played but I know I'll forget otherwise.

Eclipse: Special Forces is butch/butch military scifi, just a demo so far but worth checking out for the trailer alone if that premise appeals.

Velvet Bite: Softly, with Teeth m/m and m/f contemporary romance with vampires, was much anticipated and just came out. But tragically the reviews look pretty bad. OH WELL at least it looks pretty and we can imagine the game it could have been.

Masterlist

So after my brain insisting I watch Vampire Dormitory but not write reaction posts, it has now insisted I not keep playing this game until I write up my feelings so far?? I guess I have thoughts I want to work through??

SO HERE WE GO.

First, some non-spoilery information/initial review.

JackJeanne is a thus far quite enjoyable and VERY GENDER otome game about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to attend an all-boys acting school with a tradition of dividing roles into 'Jacks' (male roles) and 'Jeannes' (female roles) She then gets to know and in some cases romance various male classmates, who are a mix of Jack and Jeanne (and in some cases both). Afaict the English version is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch.

CW: Transphobia (it's better than the average otome/shoujo, but the bar is low) Also I don't go into it in the review but there's a minor character who's just a walking fat joke :/

( No major spoilers )

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders is a 2016 Unity puzzle game based on the 1936 murder mystery novel by Agatha Christie. From Wikipedia: The initial premise is that a serial killer is murdering people with alliterative names. The murders follow an alphabetical order, starting with a victim whose initials were A. A, and appear to lack a motive.

Content note: Sexism and iffy handling of domestic violence. A character is painfully dying of cancer. Characters express a lot of ableism though the story itself isn't too bad imo. Also, you know. Death.
( Read more... )

I was inspired to make this while writing up a reaction posts offer at the new prompts community promptmepromptly. They're currently taking prompts for text based fanworks, and apparently reaction posts count!

So I thought I'd write up a list of some things I've been meaning to try out that I think could be fun to write reaction posts to. If you want to prompt me, reply to my offer after the post opens in a few days.
( Read more... )

Masterpost

I only just started but thus far I am having a great time, the non binary inclusion is reasonably good for this sort of AAA roleplaying game and I'm enjoying the weird, darkly humourous dark-fantasy-horror and old school D&D inspired RPG vibe, it reminds me of playing Dragon: Age Origins, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights mods back in the day, but as a modern game (albeit with all the graphics settings at lowest quality so my computer doesn't fall over). I continue to not be very good at this sort of combat, but that's what story mode is for! (It's presumably even more like other Larian games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Divinity Original Sin but I never really played those EDIT: ha, Baldur's Gate 2 was made by Bioware, guess that explains the Bioware Vibe!)

( No spoilers. Brief genital mention )

I decided that if I could review the game about ALGEBRA BEING FUN I could probably review some things more of you might actually be interested in. So! Off the top of my head without overthinking, let's go!

Lots of m/m, some m/f, and a little f/f and gen.

Live Action TV: Sandman, Old Fashioned Cupcake

Games: Nurse Love Syndrome, London Detetctive Mysteria

Anime: My Dress Up Darling, SpyxFamily, Sasaki and Miyano, Hirano and Kagiura, Umibe no Etranger

Prose fiction: Light Tea and Sweet Wine, The Wrong Way To A Demon Sect Leader, You Boys Play Games Very Well, spit_kitten
( Read more... )

I've been wanting to play this MMO for ages, since I'd heard it's a very easy to play Bioware game with an interesting plot that you can easily treat as a single player game.

But the universe kept getting in my way, mostly in the form of network problems on my PC. And then a few days ago, I finally got to play it!

BRIEFLY. Just long enough to decide I liked it enough to pay for a subscription. And the universe LAUGHED IN MY FACE and TOOK IT AWAY >:( First my computer died, and then the game went down for maintenance, and then my computer died again, and then the weather was too hot to sit in that room all of a sudden...and then when all of that was dealt with, and I sat down to play...MY CHAIR COLLAPSED BENEATH ME.

I wasn't injured, thankfully, but I still sat on the floor for a while feeling very sorry for myself.

So now I am on my not-SWTOR-capable Mac laptop writing a dreamwidth post and feeling hard done by.

But from what I have seen, it's pretty fun. Very Bioware, for both good and ill.
( Now that I'm done whining, an actual review )