The DS series was the peak handheld generation for me. I like that the console’s design encouraged creative game mechanics, and it has some of my favourite games of all time. I have a DS Lite, a 3DS and a new 3DS, though I think the original DS line had the better game library compared to the 3DS. The camera and 3D effect were rather gimmicky and didn’t add much value for me.
I think the game that best encapsulates what I love about the DS is The World Ends With You, a JRPG set in modern Tokyo that used both screens at once in its action combat system - to control two different characters. The character on the bottom screen would have you use touch gestures to trigger attacks, while you needed to do button combos to control the character on the top. It was insanely fun!
Other games I liked from the early DS era are Hotel Dusk, a detective game that is played in “vertical mode” so you hold the console like a book - and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the original Japanese version of Elite Beat Angels, a rhythm game.
I also played all romance/otome games that were available in English for the DS, my favourite was Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side.
The DS figured out touch-based interactions way better than smartphones which are like the main touch-based “handheld” nowadays. That is because you could dedicate the entire touchscreen to gameplay input, since you still had the top screen to show relevant game information. Smartphones on the other hand need to utilize the entire screen both for input and displaying stuff, which just doesn’t work as well imo.
100% gonna watch:
Gonna give it a try for a few episodes:
I don’t know about Re:zero to be honest, I was kind of disappointed with where the plot was going in the second season, and it feels like the stakes aren’t really that high anymore :/
Yeah, the biggest problem with this approach is different moderation philosophies. You would have to set up a vetted set of approved non-problematic instances. I’ve read several accounts of people who tried out fedi and left soon after, and nothing sours the newcomer experience more than unknowingly joining an instance with a toxic community/moderators
What timconspicuous said. Make sure your instance hasn’t blocked bluesky as well
My perspective as someone who is mainly active in the anime/gaming fandom and gamedev space:
Overall, I think the main problems on Mastodon’s side are difficult onboarding and lack of actual community-building efforts. Also, the community just seems to be less welcoming for creators in general imo
Apparently I missed two whole otome game releases in the past month D:<
Anyway, I’m definitely gonna take a look at FFS, Another Northern Duke (which isn’t available in my region on steam for some reason)
The Demo for Eternal Glory also looks good, but seems to be machine translated 🤔
Besides continuing Love and Deepspace, I’ve played the demo for To Eat A God, an indie horror vn/dating sim! It has a very interesting (and fourth-wall breaking) premise, where you, the player, control a puppet and have to not get found out. The world building and love-interests are really fascinating so i cant wait for the full version!
This game was originally developed for and made 2nd place in last year’s Spooktober Visual Novel game jam!
This year’s Spooktober jam is starting in just a few days, btw 👀
Here’s my two cents
The plot suffered greatly by overly focusing on Wuk Lamat in the first half while not fleshing out the side characters. Her character development arc definitely took longer than it should have, and really the player’s enjoyment of the story in the first half of MSQ completely hinges on whether you like her as a character or not, since you are literally glued to her hip for most of it. (Some of my FC mates were dying to finally spend some time for Erenville, for example. It was more or less a running joke since whenever the group was about to split up, the WOL always went with Wuk Lamat)
Zoraal Ja had more or less zero build-up for his eventual villain-reveal, and you couldn’t really sympathize with him. All you knew beforehand was that his entire existence is extremely rare among Mamool Ja and that the people’s expectations were high. And, that for some reason, he wants to engulf the world in war which like, you must have some deep-seated resentment or something to want that, why? But later he drops that he was treated differently from his siblings by Gulool Ja Ja which, like, how were we supposed to know that? Until then, Gulool Ja Ja was presented to us as the perfect hero-turned-king and a pretty chill guy. Just…Zoraal Ja’s entire plot fell flat because we didn’t really get to know him before he became king. (Also, the whole Gulool Ja plot just doesn’t sit right with me)
Koana had his own little arc in the first half, but I wish we could have seen him interact with Wuk Lamat a bit more. We get told by Erenville that they tend to bicker with each other like proper siblings, but we never see it on-screen :/
Same thing with Krile, Erenville and the Scions. Krile had it worst, since she was hyped up as a main character in this expac, but basically did nothing except chime in with a question once or twice and eat ice cream with her parents.
The Scions took a complete backseat this time, only offering Koana and Wuk Lamat some advice here and there, I expected a little more of that supposed rivalry :/
On top of all that, the plot just…didn’t make sense a lot of the time. I’m surprised that Bakool Ja Ja got away with all the stuff he did. Sometimes, rules that were established before were ignored completely not long after. Hey, remember when we were told that contestants who attack or kill the judge for a challenge will be disqualified? Never mind, have BJJ kidnap and threaten one, whatever.
(; v ;) I get you, I get you so much…the Threadiverse and Fedi in general seem to lack female-oriented fandom-spaces. It really feels like we’re pioneers trying to build everything from the ground up. The good thing is that, since the general purpose-fandom communities are still small as well, we have the opportunity to help shape them! (I have been trying that with the more general visual novel communities, for example).
I personally have been too shy to promote my communities outside of fedi yet… (._.)
Haven’t played AI: Somnium Files yet, but for the others, definitely. As a general rule of thumb, I’d say: If people who are averse to reading wouldn’t play it, it’s a visual novel 😄 I am kinda aware that there has been past discourse on AA’s and Dangan’s classification due to the presence of gameplay like mini-games and point & click stuff etc. But 90% of the time, you are still reading stuff, it’s the main thing you do.
Thank you for the nice reply! ☺️
I think, out of the different approaches outlined in the post, I’d go with the main menu link. Larian’s pre-game launcher is honestly kind of annoying, since it takes one more step to start the actual game. And the in-game pop-up method I’d only use if the advertised game is a direct sequel imo 🤔
Achievement unlocked: “The void has shouted back”!
!renpy@discuss.tchncs.de got its first thread and comments by someone who is not me \o/
!gamejams@programming.dev has been chugging along nicely as well. There have been several new threads by other users since I took over as a mod 🎉
Thank you, for not focusing on my apparently unfortunate choice of an image and reading the post. 🙏 This has serious implications for indie game marketing. The author mentioned at the end that his next blog post is going to be about alternative techniques to cross-promote. I’m very curious what he’ll come up with!
While the rules regarding external links will be somewhat manageable to work with, Chris rightfully points out that indie developers will have a harder time promoting upcoming games, since they won’t be able to link them on the pages of their already published games. The latter tend to receive a lot more visibility on steam and were a valuable channel to gather wishlists. Welp :/
Welp nevermind, there’s a proper release now, I think you don’t need to switch update channels anymore, right?^^;
Yes, More TWEWY love!! I’m kind of sad that’s the franchise seems to get overlooked a lot