#post Tumblr posts

A redraw of an old piece, this was super fun to draw !! Rim lighting <3

Thimking bout them 24/7

This Petpet Park building has some major Luna Nova vibes ✨

I honestly can definitely imagian Akko as a blue Pinixy

Going to ppp magic school while cant keep waiting to go for the real one

Yeonjun & Beomgyu: *running up to each other and doing a really complicated handshake*

Yeonjun: *deadpan* You're so annoying, I hate you so much.

Beomgyu: *also deadpan* I've never met someone as ugly as you.

High quality meme

yesterday was the first day of scorpio season. and what did i do? i got in a fight.

watched Interview with a Vampire last night and my verdict is: gay gay homosexual gay

also i've seen people talking about how the movie is better than the book and uhh, the book must be really awful

but generally the movie was pretty ok. The beginning was meh and rather cliche but the further into the plot, the more interesting the characters got and at the end i was pretty hooked. This film would be a hundred times better if the dialogues weren't so full of pathos though

// me: I’m going to quickly look up what athletic trainers do in more detail and move on with my day.

me, two hours and 10+ videos later: oops.

I keep seeing posts about cryptid academia as like. Dark academia for cryptid hunters. Which yeah i get it but also i will always and forever think about it as my old post about obscure poetry you find in the woods and campus cryptids and like. The cryptids of dark academia yknow? Like i totally interpreted it the other way around lmao

smiling is so fun i love it

. OUT      the main reason im happy about being active here again is i get to resume my tradition of tormenting u all by reblogging that fingers in his ass post every single sunday

i love my queue because i have such a strong tunnel vision when it comes 2 whatever im thinking about and the queue shows that

After replaying the original metroid & nes zelda, and thinking more about what I like in metroidvania and metroidvania-adjacent games (zelda, dark souls, etc), ie anything with an interconnected map, an ability based lock-and-key system, and an emphasis on exploration, I think something essential to the experience is a willingness on the dev's part to include content that not every player will see on their own. Entirely optional hidden upgrades, abilities, even entire regions - the more significant the content and the more obscure its hiding place, the better.....

The original metroid had high value upgrades that were entirely optional like the screw attack and the well-hidden varia suit. Many of the original Zelda's items were entirely optional, and several were quite well hidden far away from obligatory dungeon delving. Later Zelda and Metroid games moved away from this - They still had hidden optional upgrades, missile and energy tanks for metroid, heart pieces for zelda. But the later Metroid games, while they allow for sequence breaking if you're highly familiar with the map and mechanics, have relatively easy to follow intended paths that will show you all of the game's main content and give you all of the major upgrades and abilities. Diverting from this path might let you /skip/ content, or get abilities out of order, but you'll never /discover/ new or unexpected content by doing so. Likewise, the later Zelda games require you to find each dungeon's item to finish that dungeon & access the next, and seem to include progressively less content outside of the expected progression for players who step off the path to discover.

That's not at all to say that later zelda and metroid games are bad, they're all pretty great actually. But this one thing, this sense of exploration and discovery that comes with finding content that was truly off the beaten trail, got kind of lost along the way. And, I mean, fair enough. Why spend a lot of time and money on content only to hide it away where most players won't see it? And since that sense of discovery can really only be experienced the first time around, doesn't it make more sense to put effort into experiences that will be equally enjoyable or even more enjoyable on subsequent runs to increase replayability?

Where later zelda (not counting BotW) and 2d metroid games kind of moved away from this, other games have picked up the torch. Dark Souls notably had a number of obscure secrets and legit hidden content to discover, including the entire painted world. Later Souls Games got more Linear overall but still kept this up - Bloodborne has three entirely optional hidden areas of the main game without even counting the Chalice Dungeons, while Dark Souls 3 has Archdragon Peak. Hollow Knight had the Hive, another entire region with a distinct aesthetic and unique enemies hidden behind an unmarked wall. Open World Games, at least the handful I've played, tend to have a lot of content that isn't part of their main progression path, including entire regions of their map with their own characters, items, enemies, and side quests.

This kind of thing can backfire, though. While Fallout 3 was well received on its release, it seems to be poorly remembered today, in large part because it's main quest line is pretty lackluster. There are tons of fantastic bits to that game, little vignettes & characters & cool locations just waiting to be discovered by anyone who steps away from that main path & ignores their quest markers to explore the Wasteland, but since the primary content you'll experience if you just follow your quest markers down the main story path is lackluster (to put it kindly), a lot of players won't enjoy the game enough to want to spend extra time searching out optional content.

I kind of don't know where I'm going with this, just sort of rambling. Basically I'm trying to say that if a game wants to evoke a feeling of exploration & discovery, then it needs to be willing to hide significant content where players will only experience it if they actually go exploring and discover it for themselves. Anything you tell the player to do, or require them to do, or put directly in their path, or point them to with objective markers - that stuff can be good content for other reasons, but I don't feel like I'm "discovering" something if in the moment I can feel the devs showing it to me. Like, yeah, if its in the game than the dev's put it there, the experience of discovery is false either way. Maybe it's a level of immersion / suspension of disbelief thing, where it's easier to make myself believe the game world exists outside of my experience of it through my character when I walk away from the main path and instead of a wall, invisible or otherwise, I find some thing or some place new and unexpected.

I think that it's awesome when people who dress super normally are really weird, but I ALSO think it's awesome when people who dress super alternatively are really normal. Two of my favorite random acquaintances have been an extremely chill girl who wore full pastel goth lolita dresses and worked at a Marshall's and a guy who wore polos and khakis but bred tarantulas for huge profits on the side.