kadrin

MAYBE JUST A LITTLE.

It is remarkable how many free games can be downloaded and/or played online these days AND, at the SAME TIME, are QUITE GOOD! I'm used to a system where you download and/or play indie games and they are AWFUL. But here's a list of some demos and free full games I've been playing recently that are NOT AWFUL.

NOT HORROR GAMES BASED ON RPG ENGINES
- SpaceChem! "SpaceChem is an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science!" It's based on real chemistry! It's make-me-cry hard! For me, at least. Because I'm terrible at everything. If you'd like, you can watch me putter around and hugely-inefficiently make a formaldehyde molecule! Not pictured: the actual reactor commands, which aren't actually tiny and invisible; the bazillion times I failed before succeeding.
- Burrito Bison: Revenge! I'm not linking the original Burrito Bison because this sequel is exactly like it except better at everything. I love the cartoony design and the gameplay is a lot of fun. It also has upgrades, which basically ensures that I'll play it forever. Seriously, "you can upgrade your character" is Kadrincrack and I do not know why.
- 300 Miles to Pigsland! I choose to believe that the pigs are heading to an Equestrian-style farm, where they will be used to dispose of rubbish and track truffles and NOT BE EATEN. A lot like a launch game, in that you fail a lot before you succeed, but it's a platformer, and it's pretty old school. It's cute! There's a rather good Angry Birds joke in it.
- Gemcraft: Labyrinth! Most tower defence games are pretty terrible, because it's just "build a thing and then stare at it until it's finished". This is one of the originals, though, so it's gotten better over time, and it's kind of fraught enough to keep you playing while still allowing adjustable strategy. It's enough to keep me enjoying it.

HORROR GAMES BASED ON RPG ENGINES
- OFF! If you know anything about anything you already know this game. It's more creepy than scary, at least so far. It's about elements. And work. And monarchy? And purifying places which may not be a good idea.
- The Witch's House! I already talked about The Witch's House. Jump scares, save at ALL TIMES, lots of creepy, shocking plot twists, it's really good, I liked it.
- Mad Father! It's a lot like The Witch's House, but without the need to save at all times, with fewer jump scares, more gore, creepier - it's very reminiscent of The Witch's House but better. Not much better, because The Witch's House was really good, but better. If you're only going to play one, play Mad Father; if you're going to play both, play The Witch's House first; if you're not going to play either because you don't like horror games but want to hear about them, talk to me 'cause I talk good.

THAT'S NOT A GAME
- Darkfast Classic Fantasy Paper Miniatures, Bonus Set One. These guys, I love these guys. I am fond of paper miniatures, you see, and I LOVE this awesome, cartoony style. You should look into this set and then make an RPG scenario that uses them. Especially the rooster ogres.

I am a twitchy bundle of salty nerve endings. If anyone has a spare shell that I could hermit-crab into, that would be just great.

So some of you may not have heard from me in years, and I haven't heard from some of you in years, so I want to make a post to announce two things:

1) I'm still alive, though not for want of trying. The last three weeks have been, depression-wise, the undisputed champion of the world; I felt about as bad as I ever really have. Had my first suicidal thoughts since high school, which was Fun. (Don't worry, they didn't last, I thought of Siobhan for two seconds and they ran away screaming.) I think I'm recovering, and though this isn't the first time I've thought that, I'm on my way a little. Any moment now I should be somewhere around one standard deviation below baseline, apart from, you know, twenty eight.
2) I haven't heard from some of you for some time, and those I have heard from, I haven't heard from for... well, the most recent is nearly two hours. So, please, use this post to check in and remind me that you're still alive and healthy. Or alive and sick. Or alive and miserable. Just as long as you're still around.

I'm goin' pretty okay, up and down, but it's sometimes nice to have a pick-me-up.

holiday love meme 2012
my thread here

It's on LJ. Comment anonymously or non-anonymously as you please. Then make your own threads so that I can tell you why and how much I like you. (It's probably a lot.)

I made my own tortillas recently. They were the best thing. I can never go back to store bought tortillas now that I know what tortillas are actually supposed to taste like.

I think we all know that I write stories in order to be hugely famous and to acquire hordes of screaming fans. This is why I have written this story, based on a moderately obscure Sega Mega Drive(/Genesis) game, featuring an OC made by thebaconfat. I'll get the hang of Internet famous any moment now. (This was not written for Internet famous. It was written for fun, and love of the game, and for, naturally, Baco.) Spoilers for Shadowrun, though I honestly don't know how many, because it's all over the place game-canon-wise. IT'S A STYLE CHOICE.

*

( Just Don't Look! Just Don't Look! )

(Trigger warning for sexual assault, but mostly, for people being massive shitheads about sexual assault.)

Typing an all-lowercase subject line that starts with "I" is very hard on an iPad.

Okay, so have we all heard about the judge in Arizona who responded to a woman who was groped by a cop by saying "well, you have to accept that sort of thing when you're going to a bar"? Have we all fumed? Have we all signed the petition saying that any judge who makes a statement like that from the bench has to accept that she won't be a judge any more? For those of us who haven't, I'll update my post to link said petition tomorrow.

I've already spoken about how the incredible ubiquity of blaming the victim of sexual assault is ridiculous and abhorrent, but it doesn't seem to have changed the world yet, so on I go again; if you'd give me a beat, Mr. Swift, I think I can improvise my modest proposal from here.

So, with all the wisdom and good judgement of several thousand years of law behind her, Judge Hatch has pointed out that if women are in bars, they will be sexually assaulted. Very well! But that sentence sounds passive, doesn't it? I mean, someone has to do the assaulting, right? And it can't be women; they're the ones being assaulted. So, if we write off those who don't fit the traditional gender binary - not because they don't matter, but simply because of the numbers necessary to make sure a woman has to take likely sexual assault into consideration if she wants to go relax and have a drink with friends - then we can look at it as "if women go to a bar, they have to expect sexual assault, because of men". That seems like a logical extension of the judge's statement to me.

Well, then, why punish the passive party? Assuming that women who go to bars have to expect sexual assault, because of men, I think the only sensible solution is to immediately and permanently ban all men from any premises with a liquor licence.

It seems a harsh step, I know. But it's like how chemotherapy is a harsh treatment, rendered necessary by horrible illness. If the only alternative is for women to surrender their rights if they walk through a door - if there is seriously no other way to prevent sexual assault in these premises, and it's inconceivable to properly punish the men involved, because they can't help it - well, what choice is that at all? No one fair minded and with an interest in justice would say that it's too cruel to cage the tiger, and that the tiger must be free to roam the streets and maul, because a tiger cannot help itself, and what were you thinking going near a tiger in the first place?

Particularly, a judge would surely never say that.

(Out of satire for a moment to clarify: if you go into a tiger cage you should expect to be mauled, yes. But the important point of my satire, the thrust, is this: men are not tigers. As a man who has never once sexually assaulted anyone, I find it offensive and condescending when people assume men simply can't help sexually assaulting anything in a short skirt. I, for one, have higher reasoning powers, and I demand to be given the responsibilities thereof.

On a different note, this is one of the many, many things I hate about patriarchy, and one of the things that impacts me. I would like to be able to freely and happily chat to women in the street. But I'm a six foot tall man who is hairy. As such, women are told by society every damn day that I will rape them if given half a chance, and they mustn't expect sympathy if I do, because it's obviously their own fault somehow. So I find it hard to justify saying "hey, nice shirt, I also like that hobby/web comic/tv show", because patriarchy demands that exchange be laden with fear and tension, and it's just not worth it, for me or her.)

I do not promise they will be good edited images.

So, I recently saw an entry about the men's decathlon, and how Ashton Eaton - an athlete I've never heard of - has proven that this means I know NOTHIN' about athletics by setting a world record. This article's pretty impressive and interesting, not least because - as my sister recently researched - the holder of the decathlon world record is considered the World's Greatest Athlete. Especially with that in mind, I'm fascinated by how the other decathletes seemed to have the impression "Something special is going on here, and it's our job to help that special thing happen", rather than trying for personal glory. It's kind of impressive.

( The article also contained the following photo: )

FIRST EVENT: It is Siobhan's birthday! She is eight. Can you remember when she was a tiny baby? I know I can. She is EIGHT and clever about stuff. Feel free to post congratulations in comments.

SECOND EVENT: We are, at time of writing, about fifteen hours off the Transit of Venus - when Venus will pass in front of the sun. It'll look like a tiny speck, and you can't even look at it if you don't have super-special eclipse glasses (which are completely sold out all over New South Wales), but it's important because:

a) astronomical events like this are cool,
b) the next one will be in 2117, when we will all, barring extreme scientific advances, be dead, and
c) the 1768 Transit of Venus pretty much directly led to the discovery of Australia by Captain Cook, which admittedly wasn't a great thing all around (ask an Aborigine if you can find one that white people haven't killed), but is still an important and historical part of our culture, so for us Australians it's kind of patriotic.

I hope this news has been enlightening for you!

Flipping through my Savage Worlds PDF, I skimmed past the index. My brain caught on one specific bit - where it told people when to shuffle the cards for the Initiative deck.

"Shuffling (when to)", it said.

"Every day," my brain replied, horrified. "Every day I'm shuffling."

God damn it, Internet.

1: Congruity is so, so important. If you're making an arty and story-driven game, then you'll live or die on the feelings and emotions you conjure in your target audience. That means that a step out of place is much more dire than it would be for any other type of game. If your graphics, gameplay, and voice acting suggests a hilarious excursion with Bugs Bunny and your story and music are about impermanence and the value of holding on while you still can, it's going to bite you, hard. You can tell if the director of a movie is doing their job properly, and in cases like this, it feels like they aren't. You'll never get the best out of individual parts if they don't work towards a greater whole. It can work if you're doing a "sting in the tail" kind of story, but those are much, much trickier than straightforward ones.

2: THE MAIN CHARACTER DOESN'T ALWAYS HAVE TO DIE AT THE END. "THE MAIN CHARACTER DIES AT THE END/WAS DEAD ALL ALONG" IS NOT YOUR FREE TICKET TO ARTWORLD. IT'S GETTING TO THE POINT WHERE IF I HEAR NOODLY PIANO MUSIC IN A GAME I START DIGGING THE MAIN CHARACTER'S GRAVE, AND THAT CAN BE DISCONCERTING.

(Yes, this was inspired by a specific game, but all in all, the specific game was pretty good. It was just the individual bits that made me headdesk, facepalm, and other image macros. Here is a game about music that escapes the problem by pretty much having no story at all, but being really pretty and enjoyable because you're listening to wonderful classical music. It's also a hidden object game.)