Aperson

When Cube gets back on this let it be known that I've found a very important inclusion for the list Original tweet was this:

Internet sulking over no Hollow Knight: Silkesong in the trailer. These things take time I reckon. Omori coming to Switch is a pretty big announcement to end on, I've heard that game is supposed to be a really good RPG.

So does It Takes Two count as the first Indie Game to win Game of the Year at Game Awards or not?

Michael Masi should be fired. What an absolute disgrace of a finale, bending the rules just to ensure that Lewis and Max could fight each other on the final lap. Like I get wanting to put on the show but bending the rules to do so? Masi's job is untenable after this.

Rivals of Aether's adventure mode is finally complete. I didn't quite understand how I was supposed to beat the Final Boss and it just sort of happened after hitting both eyes at some points so I guess I was supposed to stun it? I don't know... but anyway its finished. I also finished my mod for it, Yooka and Laylee are now live in Steam Workshop as playable fighters. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2671886724 I then went and resized them due to feedback that they were too small. Still, this big indie game obsession reminded me that there's still one indie game I never finished... Super Meat Boy. Unfortunately I'm having to start again from the very beginning of the game but made rapid progress and now on the Chapter 2 boss, C.H.A.D. I'm also making a concerted effort to try and do the Dark World this time around as much as possible, though will prioritise the main campaign over getting too much of the extra levels.

It's... complicated let's just say... https://rivalsofaether.com/introduction/ I think Fraymakers that is coming out in the future will have an in built modding tool, will be interesting to see how that effects Rivals modding.

I know this is considered a "gaming" diary and mainly focused on playing games... but I found myself getting into modding recently. After all, a Smash game where you can add ANY character and stage to the game? Sign me up! So I've been mainly working on making Yooka & Laylee as fighters for the game. This is my progress so far. I took a break from that project to add a stage to Workshop that nobody had been done as it was a missing gap in the Workshop. I spent the entire day doing it and uploaded just the basic version with the Aether version to be uploaded later. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2659010360&searchtext=dragon+valley Then, awkwardly I found out someone had uploaded the same stage idea ONE DAY BEFORE ME! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2657622309&searchtext=dragon+valley So now there's two of them. Either way, @Jonnas has a good reason to get Rivals of Aether now

So I was watching some Youtube videos and found an interesting video on Deltarune, in particular covering and it got me thinking about the relation between player and character. We don't really give it much thought when playing games other than being told "you control this character, go out and do stuff." That's OK for games which don't have much of a plot but then you throw RPGs into the mix and instead of controlling a blank slate you might actually be controlling a character with their own personality and quirks that might not match up with yours. In that situation the higher level of immersion required in these games has a simple solution, just put yourself in the game and make your own avatar. But not every game lets you do that, JRPGs almost require you to control a character that isn't your own. They have their own motivations and their own personalities and your connection just ends up being someone who controls that character. So clearly each game has a different intention. But, you're going to like some games more than others so naturally, whether the developer intended it or not you're going to be invested in the game. If you're invested in the game then perhaps you see yourself as more than just someone controlling the character, you ARE the character. That leads into interesting conundrum, maybe the character is a different gender to you as a human being? Well... Metroid is a series that is most well known for having a female protagonist as well as having a strong sense of immersion but I think the main character being in a suit of armour makes it easier to seperate that from you so I don't think that's too much of a problem. But if you want to invest yourself in the character you're playing as... would you want to embody a character who for all intents and purposes is almost the complete opposite of you? Would the most masculine of gamers want to play as the most feminine of characters? I know, given the choice, I tend to pick male characters within a certain spectrum. As a major example I never play as Princess Peach in Mario Kart or Smash Bros (unless I'm trying to clear Classic Mode). I feel like in a multiplayer game you want a character that can represent yourself as well as having gameplay attributes that you like. I realise I might have covered about half the talking points for this thread in this OP but I thought I'd open the topic up. What is the relation between you and the characters you are playing as? Are they just vessels for you to control as a seperate individual from them or are they someone that, while you are playing the game, you actually want to be?

I keep saying every time that I play a new indie game that the soundtrack is consistently excellent.With my current game Rivals of Aether I wouldn't necessarily rate the soundtrack as high as some of the others (Impossible Lair being my favourite OST of any of these games) these Rivals tunes are really good. Starting off with the fighter select tunes which are just as memorable as Smash Bros! The stage themes aren't too bad either. I do recommend this game but only if you're playing on PC so that you can play with Mods. Then again Fraymakers is a thing and its mod support might be available on Switch if it comes to the Switch so you might rather wait until then, I don't know how many people here actually use Steam after all...

Only true stans know that the real best Smash character of all time is Ronald McDonald

The creator of this game also made VVVVVV and Super Hexagon if I'm not mistaken. I've played both of those but not this one, though truth to be told I've never actually played a Roguelike.

From a mainstream industry perspective I think you might be right Some games don't necessarily get the appreciation they deserve...

METROID DREAD! METROID DREAD! Actually, I think Dread is the only new game from this year that I've played unless you count NieR Replicant Ver. whatever because that is an enhanced remaster with gameplay changes and additional content. Otherwise I've been picking up games that came out from previous years. There are a bunch of games that have come out this year that I'm interested in at some point but Dread was top priority in terms of interest and it didn't disappoint, even without having played much of any other contenders I can confidently say Dread is a GOTY contender.

Taking the story mode in Rivals of Aether quite slowly, but I've just unlocked the final stage after beating Orcane's story. So just that to go. Meanwhile however... In an attempt to get in on the action I've decided to try and make my own character for the game... I'm doing Yooka and Laylee given that I played Impossible Lair a few months ago. Judging by the complete lack of reactions from previous posts when talking about this game I'm going to assume that nobody else here has actually played this game. I'll say its a pretty good alternative to Smash, a bit more on the side of Melee than other entries. The Modding scene is where its at though, so much custom content that is accessible.

Wound up booting up my Steam library again after the sale. My laptop is too underpowered to run triple A games but its perfectly fine with running Indie games. If anyone's seen in the Gaming Diary thread I have been playing Rivals of Aether recently. The Workshop Mods were quite attractive, I've never played a game with mods before but its been fun just to mess around and turn rivals into "Indie Smash Bros" or at least that was the original intention. Mugen Smash was a lot more enticing in the end but I still tried to put in as many indie characters as possible, most from games I've never played but I figured that would replicate how in Smash Bros you probably haven't played half the gaming franchises that are in the roster. Some characters such as Ronald McDonald caused severe lag to games so I removed them from my roster.

Still playing Rivals of Aether. I wound up changing my controller up for PC as I found that the default control system on my controller wasn't very good. In particular I am struggling to recover properly in this game due to forgetting where the jump button is and then remembering to combine that with the Up Special. In part this is because Rivals doesn't have ledges and instead I'm having to figure out how to combo the wall jump with the up special, apparently this resets your up special if you use a wall jump to make up for the lack of ledges. I played the biggest meme character in the game (Kragg) but still and finding it tough to keep all my stocks in Adventure without being KO'd. Kragg is definitely my favourite of the main cast with the possible exception of Shovel Knight. Though, getting to know all the Workshop characters is another mountain to climb altogether... I've got two more Adventure campaigns to go but I'll do them in my own time.

Amid endless possibilities from Steam Workshop I've also found some time to play the main story of Rivals of Aether. I've done the campaigns of Zetterburn and Forsburn so far but found both characters quite bland to play. Forsburn in particular was really hard to get anything going until I realised that some of the eaiser AI opponents you can just juggle with Up Tilt over and over That didn't quite work out though and adjusting from Smash has proven to be somewhat difficult. Characters don't feel powerful and the focus is more on a more speed focused game where evasion and counter punish is the key to wins and specials don't feel quite as important. That being said I played Maypul's storyline next and this character felt a lot better to play, she speeds in and out in a way that kind of reminds me of Greninja so that was kind of the moment that the whole thing clicked for me. On a side note: Anyway, the list of Modded characters continues to grow. I'm at something like 76-78 characters now, not including the main cast. It's basically giving Smash Ultimate's roster a run for its money in terms of size and kind of overshadowing the original cast, bar the two Indie Guest characters in the lineup. Its basically Rivals of Aether x Shantae x Cave Story x Roblox x I Wanna Be the Guy x Castle Crashers x Spelunky x Bit.Trip x Plants vs. Zombies x Tower of Heaven x Minecraft x The Binding of Isaac x Shovel Knight x Freedom Planet x Five Nights at Freddys x Crypt of the Necrodancer x Undertale x Enter the Gungeon x Hollow Knight x Ori x Cuphead x A Hat in Time x Celeste x Dead Cells x Among Us x Deltarune x Untitled Goose Game x Fall Guys x Dragon Ball Z x Yu-Gi-Oh x Digimon x Stick Figures on Crack x The Simpsons x Family Guy x Scott the Woz x America x Memes x TerminalMontage x Kirby x Super Mario x Pokemon x Final Fantasy x Chrono Trigger x Crash Bandicoot x Castlevania x Guilty Gear x Dark Souls x Nier: Automata All it needs now is Dante from the Devil May Cry Series and a New Funky Mode.

After designing one more Soulcalibur VI character and then playing a bit of Super Castlevania IV my eyes were turned to the Steam Sale. Rivals of Aether was on sale and I'd already seen a bunch of videos on it, in particular its compatbility with Steam Workship. I've played the Indie equivalents of Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Metroid and Earthbound as well as a bunch of other indie games which aren't necessarily inspired by anything in particular. So naturally, its time to go for the juggernaut... Indie Smash Bros.! So, using Workshop I've downloaded a bunch of Indie game characters from there. These are fully functional characters, its honestly pretty impressive how much scope you get for being able to play these characters: And these aren't mockups at all, all these characters are fan developed and playable in game, though quality may vary... But hey, why stop at Indie characters? Yeah, never mind Smash Bros. EVERYONE is here, including a bunch of characters I haven't downloaded yet. Haven't even played much of the actual game yet haha!

As it happens, sometime after I made that post I eventually finished it. I wound up restarting the level from the beginning to try and save more bees. This worked as I was able to do the first part while saving about 41 Bees for the second part. In the end I lost all my Bees by the time I got to the final boss but felt that from that point I didn't need any more Bees in order to finish the game and I was right. I kept plugging away at the final boss, beat it multiple times and eventually beat the escape sequence to finish the game. So that's all but one physical Switch game that I've finished now and I have specific plans to finish Pokken while filming for Youtube. There is also the Castlevania Anniversary Collection however... I think I'll wait until Haloween to finish Super Castlevania IV. In the meantime I went back to fighting games. I have now cleared every Classic Mode route in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The above tweet is subsequently a lie again. While I was in the mood I remembered that I still needed to finish Hwang's story in Soulcalibur VI. So I went and did that, it was quite a meaty one in terms of chapters but not that many actual fights in the storyline and I barely had to play much of Hwang's tech to actually win it. And then, naturally, I wasn't going to go back on Soulcalibur VI and not make new custom characters, so I made Kainé from Nier Replicant. It looks just like her, to such an extent that you would think they'd put the exact costumes in the game in a DLC pack or something... I also looked at a number of custom characters people had uploaded to the servers. Oh, and I also made this... Only got about 5 slots left now so need to choose wisely. Might need to make a Fighter's Pass or something!

Seen on eShop that Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is on sale and available for about £6. I've just finished the game myself and its a really solid game, effectively Donkey Kong Country 6 or Tropical Freeze 2. Last level is a real gauntlet too.

OK, now I've heard the entire Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair soundtrack in game I can certainly say that this is now one of my favourite game soundtracks of all time and definitely one of the best indie game soundtracks I've ever heard, and thats high praise as EVERY indie game I've played aside from World of Goo has had a fantastic soundtrack. This one single handedly contributed about TWENTY ONE tunes to my favourite VGM playlist alone.

According to the credits Kenji Yamamoto was the Music Director for this game. I also heard one of the composers from Breath of the Wild worked on this game.

So I've collected all 48 Beetallion members in Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair. Time to start the titular Impossible Lair. "31 Attempts later" OK this is the hardest 2D level I've ever seen in a platformer than isn't a Kaizo Mario Rom Hack or a Super Mario Maker level. Though, it might as well be. Like, wow, the amount of concentration this level demands from you if you don't want to get hit is absolutely insane. I've only gotten up to the halfway point and that's with only 4 Beetallion left. This level is absolutely brutal, not to mention falling down Bottlomess Pits can waste so many Beetallion. As a result it may be quite some time before I'm actually able to finish this game as I'm finding this level quite frustrating and triggering. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get to the end so it might be an unfinished Switch game for a while. But I'll persevere and see what I can do.

Paul Scholes saw this one coming straight after the Atalanta game...

Enjoying Sora in Smash so far...