Lilly Jade Katrin

Heck with that, I want things to be anti-cinematic, and go crazy. Use your imagination. Come up with something nobody has ever seen before.

So everything has to be super-realistic and resembling live-action film as possible. Like when a game gets called "cinematic" I'm like yeah because you think it's not good enough unless it's a movie.

Yknow what that tells me? That big hollywood AAA types think that film is the One True art form that everything should strive to be, because anything that isn't Like Film isn't properly art.

Honestly I can say this for all forms of media really. The world needs more animation, and yet everything animated is being pushed to live action remakes.

Back in my days on the hellsite, I had a post that someone new would find and like even years later, where I said Psychonauts looks better right now than The Last of Us 2 would in a couple years, and dammit I was right.

Screenshot of Black Velvetopia from Psychonauts

Yknow why this is on my mind? Because tonight I replayed one of my favorite video game worlds of all time and it looks just as good as it did the first time I played it some 16 years ago.

Like are you kidding me, these are gorgeous, why can't you make an entire full game like this, and not just a spinoff? It would give the game its own identity and separate it from the pack and still hold up years later.

Screenshot of Assassin's Creed Chronicles Russia

Screenshot of Assassin's Creed Chronicles India

Screenshot of Assassin's Creed Chronicles China

Anyone remember Assassin's Creed Chronicles? Trilogy of linear side-scrollers, fairly different from the big open world games, and yet among the most beautiful games in the series because each was rendered like art from their setting.

If not for them all being gachashit, I would be ALL OVER a lot of these big anime-style games lately. What, a GTA clone where everyone looks like they left their VTuber models on? Sign me the eff up, good lord.

I feel like modern gaming takes hyperrealism for granted at this point. Like AAA studios don't know how to make any other kind of graphics. Yeah, well if I'm gonna play your open world game, I want it to look like a cartoon, is that too much to ask?

Shoutout to games with artistic art styles. Not to throw shade on hyperrealistic games but like, if I want reality I can turn the game off. Reality is not why I'm here. I want to be in unreality.

They'll come around in time. They haven't had that much time to game yet.

Eww, Harry Potter is in Fortnite now? Groas plus gross equals more gross.

Few people under 30 are old enough to even remember 9/11. Is he suggesting none of them should vote?

...that last one I probably should really take to heart.

I know that but the 3D rendered Brother is ... concerning XD

What is that art though oh my god

There's a couple more quirks to it - I don't want to spoil the entire thing in one go, now. But I like the idea of a sweet game having such a dark undertone to it, but still turning out positive in the end.

I swear not everything I want to make is dark and creepy.

Just, uh, most of it, apparently.

There is also a crafting mechanic: items can be gathered and crafted into dresses, which can be changed at a wardrobe, granting new abilities. Naturally, some areas can only be reached with certain dresses, and materials can be gathered in specific places.

If you've played The Messenger, the meta is a little similar to that - the game acts roughly linear to a certain point, and then turns into a full-on MV with the right abilities, which will open up several subquests, some optional and some required for an ending.

The meter also causes visual differences. I envision this with low-poly PS1-era graphics with some animation to them, but each texture has a 2D array of animations, so that as the meter shifts the texture can transform gradually while still remaining animated.

Upon completing the second loop and facing the boss there, the player gains the ability to control the meter directly, shifting the world at will, opening it up entirely.

Core to the gameplay is the Happiness/Denial/Resolve meter. As the meter shifts, the environment will change and move, opening new paths and closing existing ones. In the first loop, the meter stays high with occasional dips; in the second, it stays low with occasional rises.

So how does it play? It's a platformer. A bit like Crash Bandicoot at first glance: you have a long path forward and the camera follows a fixed path. But, there's no discrete levels, it's a continuous network of paths, branching and reconnecting in an MV-like network.

She returns to the castle and confronts the truth. The Denial changes again, this time to Resolve. Hell is a kingdom with a castle. She is a princess. And she will become its queen.

A new loop begins, in a field where once were flowers, but now remain only headless stems. The path back to the fortress winds differently and has new challenges, but where once was a fragile young woman grows something much, much stronger.

And once she reaches the castle ... everything shatters. The Happiness meter turns to Denial. The sky turns red and the water turns black. The ground itself snarls at her.

Pansy is dead and is in hell, and has been letting her eyes lie to her.

Some of the smiling faces flicker a bit. Blots of red appear where they really shouldn't. A Happiness meter appears on the screen, and when things get challenging it starts to dip and things get a little darker. Everything has a face and some of them start glaring at her.

A princess named Pansy wakes up in a field of flowers and sees a castle in the distance, and takes off on an adventure through an almost sickeningly sweet land of rainbows and cookies and unicorns. But something seems ... off.

In light of finding out American McGee is back in gamedev, tonight's game idea ramble is the game I have (thus far) most inspired by his work on Alice and Madness Returns.

Aka the "well if EA's gonna kill the series, I'll just make my own."

Potential spoilers for a game years away.