Magicians and Looters: Pixabyte Preview

Pixabyte has a lot of other in-depth previews of indie games you've never heard of. Worth checking out!

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Gameplay Video

That guitar is like having someone scream blood and fire right into your face.

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Rolling

This animation used to be only four frames.

I like this version better.

Magicians and Looters: Brent Doing Wizard Stuff

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Doing Wizard Stuff

Tim and Eric: T'IRD

M.O.O.N. : Hydrogen

Magicians and Looters: Brent Combat-Ready

Mystery Skulls: Money

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Combat-Ready

Nyn! You forgot your swords!

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Combat-Ready

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Idle

The game takes place at a very high altitude.

Magicians and Looters: Contrast Comparison

Left: Original                           Right: Extra Contrast

I've always put the brakes on heavy contrast because I didn't want the colors in the game to be too unrealistic.

But I'm starting to realize that I'm an idiot and not only do high-contrast characters look better, but they also do a better job of communicating on-screen events with the player (like being able to separate opponents from the background). Higher contrast makes the game easier and more fun to play.

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Idle

She doesn't consciously realize it, but somewhere in the back of her head she's skipping rope.

Greenlight: Tiny Barbarian DX

TinyB is kicking ass on Kickstarter, so now it's time for the next step that all indie titles must take: Steam Greenlight. Don't let this game fall into obscurity. Get it on the front page of the Steam store!

And no, you can't leave a comment on Greenlight about how you're tired of 8-bit games, or how the game belongs on Newgrounds because it looks like it was made with Flash, or how this game looks like something else you played that isn't even in the same fucking genre because ten-billion other fucking idiots already posted those comments for you!

A historically accurate merchant simulator does not look like Skyrim! What the fuck is wrong with you people?


Sorry. That was off-topic, and TinyB's Greenlight page is almost 100% praise, but I've spent a little too much time checking out some of the other, less successful games; and it's rubbed off on me in a bad way. Constructive criticism on Greenlight is like an intricate, high-quality game on XBLIG.

Magicians and Looters: Brent Jumps

Youtube: Written by a Kid

1. Have a kid tell a story.

2. Get actors and animators to make the story come to life.

3. Post it on Youtube.

Every episode of Written by a Kid is fantastic, but Emily is probably my favorite storyteller. They must have shipped her off to a psych ward right after the video was over.

Magicians and Looters: Screenshot: Vienna Crossing the Chasm

Greenlight: A Hat in Time

The Hero: Hat Kid
The Villain: Moustache Girl

Environment interaction is thorough. Controls look solid. Way too charming for its own good. I really, really want this game greenlit.

(Also: WindWakerWindWakerWindWakerWindWaker)

Magicians and Looters: Brent Leaps Forward

Kickstarter: Tiny Barbarian DX

Especially those jumps right after 0:22, the game just looks like so much fun to play.

Michael Stearns is talented, he's got a stable of awesome games that not nearly enough people know about, and he wants to make his biggest, best game yet.

• Eat chicken you found in the garbage.
• Fight endless hordes of evil (or just misguided) warriors.
• Save the most beautiful ladies that can fit into a 16x16 pixel box.

I'd like to think that I've shown restraint when it comes to never using this blog as a platform for focusing on charity and donation stuff. I'd like to think that this blog is a sacred place reserved for bad humor and video game talk. This is a gamer temple, and I have no right to panhandle on its steps.

But fuck you, I want to play TinyB!

Kickstart it now!

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Jumping Vertically

I like the hair on this one a lot more than Nyn's last animation.

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Running

"Where the hell are my pants?!"

Magicians and Looters: Nyn Jumps

This stupid animation took for-freakin'-ever! Segmented body armor, loose clothing, and long hair... what was I thinking?

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Leaps Nowhere

No more simulating an actual jump. I'm just going to post these animations moving in place ('cause they look better that way).

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Leaps Forward

From a practical perspective, this is like the weirdest pose you could possibly make when falling, but it looks hella ninja and that's good enough for me.

Magicians and Looters: PSA

Magicians and Looters: Telescoping Node

BVVVVVVvvv.... *click*

Magicians and Looters: Ninja Wizards

Like Mr. Wiggybottom, this is a character that was made for MAL but never found its way into the game.

Unlike Mr. Wiggybottom, the ninja wizards actually look pretty good.

Movie (Spoilers): Prometheus

Imagine if the nation of Iran watched "Chariots of the Gods" waaaaay too many times, and then launched a spaceship to some distant planet where they kickstarted life, or maybe just humanity? That part isn't very clear.

But it's irrelevant, because countless years have passed and your world and its civilizations have changed countless times before you were even born, so you don't even know that Iran watched "Chariots of the Gods" over a dozen times, not that you'd care, because people believed anything in the seventies.

But this chick who just woke you up from cryo-sleep doesn't get it. She seems to think that you've got all the answers, and obviously you'd know why Iran did that one thing in the ancient past, and obviously you'd have a very important reason for deciding to kill off the human race with the freakiest bio-engineered shit imaginable all these years later.

So if I were that proto-human in Prometheus and I woke up to a bunch of questions that were that stupid? I'd probably start ripping some heads off, too.


+ Pretty as fuck.
- B-grade slasher films have more believable characters with more common sense.

Magicians and Looters: Morg Engineer

If we could see into his head, I imagine we'd hear this music playing.

Magicians and Looters: Vienna Jumping

Very fluid, but without any vertical movement it looks hella weird.

Vienna lives in a pants-optional world.

If it was just her head moving she'd look like a freaky bird woman.

Magicians and Looters: Nevermind, I'm All Done

Ha! You lose tileset! I beat you! I beat the poo out of you!

Brainless Belgian: Nothing Done Today

Very fresh stuff.

Magicians and Looters: Putting a Room Together

Minecraft: Cart-Jacked

Bro: "A chicken stole my minecart!"

Me: "What?!"

Bro: "A chicken stole my minecart! It jacked my ride!"

Me: "What are you talking about? Chickens can't steal minecarts!"

Bro: "He was on the track so I got out of the cart to knock him out of the way, and then he jumped in and took off!"

Me: "Hold on. You were heading to the north station, right? Let me go check it out, because if a chicken really did jack your ride then there should be..."

Youtube Channel: Crash Course

Remember history in high school?

Well, picture that, except that your teacher is a lot more interested in the subject he's teaching, and he's heavily edited, and he isn't Euro-centric, and there's tons of animations in-between all the talking to help get the point across, and instead of memorizing a bunch of throwaway information you're actually learning things.


Crash Course: World History

Magicians and Looters: Square Infestation

Stupid squares. Why do they have to be so easy to make and place into a tileset, yet look so dated and unappealing?

Magicians and Looters: Pipes and Stuff Complete

I never get to say this: I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Probably needs a bit more color...

Magicians and Looters: Pipes and Stuff

Making this was cathartic.

I have no idea where, but this is going into a tileset.

Magicians and Looters: Tileset WIP

This blog has three fans.

Under-Appreciated Classic: Zombie Revenge

"Bullets!"

Magicians and Looters: Touch-Ups

The left-hand side is the ten-year-old frame from when I originally worked on MAL.
The right-hand side is the result of a ridiculous amount of time spent administering touch-ups.

Magicians and Looters: Climbing Minion

"Hey kids! I don't have a male or female genitalia!"

Magicians and Looters: Creepy Minions

Sometimes the morg minions look a little creepy.

No, wait, nevermind. They're silly.

Always silly.

Magicians and Looters: Dead Wizards

That's what you get for messing with the morg men!

Magicians and Looters: Tileset to Tiles

The idea for this image probably looked better in my head.

Oraskue's Blaster Bolt Explosion

Made the halo and tails in GraphicsGale (flat, white), and then I screwed around with the color and added a glow in GIMP.

Crap. Now that I'm staring at it, the ending is kind of abrupt. Probably needs to be faster, too.

Melancholia is Kind of Brilliant

The entire movie's sole purpose is to extensively develop this cast of characters that I absolutely loathe. I hate them so much that by the end of the first act I've got a pounding headache. I hate them all. I hate them to my core. Even my base, human needs have peeled away so there can be more room for the hate. I don't want food, or shelter, or rest. All I want is for everyone in this movie to die horribly in the Fucking Apocalypse.

And then, guess what? The Fucking Apocalypse happens!

See? Happy ending. Brilliant.

My Favorite Spam

I moderate so much freaking forum spam. I'm like a spam-sorting pro.


Normally, spam is pretty boring, but holy crap, check this one out:



I would like to show  thanks to the writer just for rescuing me from this type of crisis. After looking out through the the web and seeing tips that were not pleasant, I believed my life was over. Living minus the answers to the issues you have solved all through your main guide is a crucial case, and those which may have in a negative way damaged my entire career if I had not discovered your blog. Your own ability and kindness in touching all the details was crucial. I am not sure what I would have done if I had not encountered such a solution like this. I'm able to at this time look forward to my future. Thanks a lot so much for your high quality and results-oriented guide. I won't think twice to endorse your blog to any individual who should have tips on this issue.

The Naming of Morgopolis Studios

Born With Boobs was a legitimate candidate when we were trying to name Morgopolis Studios.
I've got the other candidates (along with tons of pictures) right here.

Brent's Idle Animation

Castle Yellow

Trying out my tablet and some new software. I wanted to put this into MAL, but the style is totally wrong. (Probably a lot of fun things I could do with it, though)

I have serious line dependency issues. Going to have to work on that.

Podcast Sabotage

I was on Chatterbox Video Game Radio a few nights back, and I filled it with nothing but dead-air and misinformation. It was gloriously awkward, so I did a visual transcript of the night's events.


(Outside of my influence, Alon and Ara run one of the better video game podcasts out there. I'd recommend a listen, if that's your thing.)

The Carrot, The Stick, and the Energy Tank

The fools at IndieDB allowed me to post a tutorial with only a cursory glance at its contents. What they don't know (what nobody knows) is that I've seeded my entire article with subliminal messages, the perfect weapon against the next generation of level designers. The perfect agent to corrupt the impressionable youth!

Ten years from now, every map designed for a 2D platformer, every single one, is going to be shaped like a giant wang!

It will be the most epic orchestration of mass hypnosis ever conducted. It will be my legacy.

Double Dome

I did a gamejam and made an entire game in forty-eight hours! The best part is that I never felt like I was making a product, so I never felt any pressure to include marketable content or design a playable game.

Double Dome is the story of a dude with a head inside of his head. On a train.

I uploaded the game onto Gamejolt, if you'd like to try it out yourself.
Even if you don't want to play the game, head on over to Gamejolt anyways, just for the game's description. I had a weird amount of fun containing the game within words.

Dollies of Grimrock

I've got this issue with Grimrock.
Here, watch a few seconds of this:



You play the game from a first-person perspective in which you can strafe, rotate, step backwards, and generally travel at a good pace.

But you're not a single character. You're in control of a four-person party.

How are they so synchronized?!?!

Why Haven't I Beaten This Game?

The writing is some of the best I’ve ever seen. The music is so catchy I could easily hum every song on the soundtrack. The animations were all lovingly crafted. The gameplay is creative. It’s one of the most critically acclaimed DS games ever made.


So why the hell haven’t I beaten Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story?

I Love Legend of Grimrock

Seriously. That's it. I love the game. There's nothing else I have to contribute.

I've always enjoyed the concept of the first-person tile-by-tile dungeon-crawler with its small party of heroes and secret passages and all that crap. Wizardry and Eye of the Beholder. I'd play those games and I loved the mechanics that drove them, but none of them ever won me over entirely. I'd play for a few days and then find something else.

But Grimrock is different. This is the alpha and omega of dungeon crawlers. I don't know how they did it, but the game feels good to play. UI, controls, menus. Everything about this game is better than its predecessors. I've never had so much fun being chased by giant spiders.

Final Fantasy 3 (Not the good one. The other FF3)

Some dark force took control of me and I shoved the FF3(JP#) remake into my 3DS. It took thirty minutes until the fog cleared and I got my act together, but I was left asking myself, "Why does this game exist?"

You start out with one guy, you have one basic attack, and right off the bat there's a dungeon full of random encounters. Even FF1 doesn't pull this crap on you.

This is an RPG. Your dexterity is not a factor here. Games like these should revel in making the player feel clever. Give them some way to get past the enemy's defenses and deal critical damage. Casting an ice spell on a fire elemental is the most basic example I can think of. Why not give me something like this right from the start? Why not let me have fun right away? Within my thirty minutes of playing, I still had one guy, and I was still a vanilla-class Adventurer with no special attributes, and my only spell was for poison removal.

I just played a bit of FF7 recently and I didn't have any of these problems. Right away I'm casting bolt on enemies weak to electricity and saving up limit breaks for a boss with special attack patterns. (Also: The dialogue! Why don't I remember it being so bad?)




The part that really bothers me about all of this is that I was playing a remake of FF3, not a port. They have talented developers on their payroll. Didn't any of them say, "Wow, this really sucks compared to the stuff we make now."?

And the story sucks. I'll take angsty ex-SOLDIER dickheads over giant, talking destiny crystals any day of the week.

I Beat Dredmor

Please don't ask what happened to Booger 1.

A single permadeath run. It lasted for thirty hours over the course of many weeks. There were so many I almost died moments, but the closest I got to a game over? Right at the very end when Dredmor busted through some random door and started to murder me. Holy crap, that dude was at least ten times stronger than anything else in the game. I don't remember a final boss ever freaking me out as much as this guy. The scariest thing was his entrance, because he had none. I just kicked open a door and out walks Dredmor, like he's a diggle, or something.

Dungeons of Dredmor is a giant, messy game, and it begs to be played in the same reckless manner; but if you want to win the damn thing then you have to turn into this meticulous robot of a gamer. If I'd known what I was getting into at the beginning, or if this had just been a regular game without permadeath, I would've approached the whole thing with an entirely different attitude.



I am never doing this again.

Day Z is Terrifying

Zeds? Sure. Bandits? Gotcha.
But if I was playing Day Z and this happened to me, I would lose my shit.

Too Much Color?

So I was redoing the text on the banner and thought, "I should add some color to this stupid logo," and then I thought, "Hey, this is fun. How about I add some blue for no reason..."

And now I have made a twelve-year-old girl's Trapper Keeper circa 1993.

Youtube Comments Are Like Candy

So Youtube already holds cats in higher regard than ancient Egypt, right? So what happens when you take a dead cat, make it into a helicopter, and upload the video to Youtube?
I was literally giddy when I scrolled down to the comments. Maybe that means I'm some kind of monster who feeds off of the misery of others, but I can't help that I have an appetite for Youtube comments. People are interesting when you give them anonymity and a microphone. They're honest.



And concerning the content of the video itself; according to the interview, the owner loved his cat, Orville, who was hit by a car. It was an artist who attached the props as both a tribute to the animal and an act of artistic expression, which is way past strange, but it's not like this guy is alone in his weirdness. Taxidermy seems to be how all animal lovers with a screw loose express love for their pets. It's weird, but it's a wonderful example of how someone can show affection while everyone else assumes the worst.


Also, I laughed my ass off.
Sorry, Orville, but you look ridiculous.



(Mostly) Youtube comments up ahead!...

Justin's E3

AKA: A bunch of trailers for games that I'm totally looking forward to.

The Best Achievement Ever

While playing (way too much) Dungeons of Dredmor, the game crashed on me. Being slightly addicted, I immediately loaded DoD back up and before I could do anything else, I got a special achievement called Suddenly the Dungeon Collapses.

Crashing the game is an achievement.

Item Consumption and Perma-Death

I never, EVER used these things.

Maybe you can relate to this: Throughout my formative years, whenever I was playing an RPG and I picked up a really good one-use item, I'd save it like a chipmunk saving acorns for the winter, because (and this was my logic) eventually I'd fight that one boss that'd be so hard I'd have no choice but to break out the elixers.

The problem was that when I finally did reach that crazy-hard boss fight, instead of using my elixers I'd just continue fighting until I'd get wiped out, and then I'd restart and try again until I beat the bastard. My logic here was that maybe the next boss would be even tougher, so I shouldn't touch those items just yet.

And then I'd beat the game with a hundred or so megalixers rotting in my inventory.






I purchased Dungeons of Dredmor: Realm of the Diggle Gods; partly because I'm always hunting for a good rogue-like (success!), and partly because I can't say, "Realm of the diggle gods," without smiling.

In DoD you're constantly picking up one-shot items, many of which are more powerful than any of your base abilities; so just like in the old days, I find myself hoarding these treasures, but unlike the old days, when I open a door and three-hundred monsters jump out at me, I get psyched because this is when the limiters come off and I quaff my Potion of Fuck Everything Up without a second thought.

And the reason is simple: Dredmor's default setting is perma-death, so if you die, no matter how many hours you've played, it's game over. This means when you find yourself in a situation where your life is on the line, you fight like a maniac and use everything you've got, because a game over isn't, "Restart at the Auto-Save." It's, "Fuck you. Play something else."


Perma-death games are where the powerful, one-shot items really shine, and trust me, Dredmor has a lot of god-damn one-shot items.





Just thought I'd share this: I was looking over the mods for DoD and someone made a skillset called Brofistery.
Even better? One of the skills of Brofistery is called, "I Cast Fist."

Exit Through the Gift Shop

I have just watched the best documentary ever made. Actually, it's been about a day since I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop but I'm still constantly thinking about it. For the entire length of the film there was so much brain candy getting stuffed into my stupid face that I'm having trouble figuring out how to describe this thing without going off on thirty different tangents.


The movie is unbelievable, and I mean that in the literal sense. Even though there's plenty of proof that it's (mostly) legitimate, there are a lot of people who don't believe that even a sliver of Exit Through the Gift Shop is real, that many of the characters in the movie are fabrications, and this only serves to make the film more interesting, because the creators would have to be painfully self-aware of themselves and wicked clever in order to pull this off.


Also, it's worth watching this movie simply for the street art. There is so much beautiful crap in this movie that you won't even care about all the high-concept bullshit going on.

Jeffrey Yohalem Speaks Using Only His Asshole

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/05/far-cry-3-and-the-stranger-in-a-strange-land/

A lot of people have their idea of the perfect game, or they have a favorite genre, or maybe they just prefer real-time combat over turn-based in their RPGs. That's your thing. Your bag. Your whatever. That's okay. You're a unique, little snowflake and when it comes to what you like to play and (most importantly) why you like to play it, you're going to have your own opinions. Gamers are no longer a collection of people who almost unanimously played Super Mario Bros 2 (seriously, talk to anyone my age. We all played exactly the same shit). There's more variety, now; along with a lot more opinions on what makes for a good game.

So if you come across some dude playing Minecraft and you think he's wasting his time because you played Minecraft once and thought it was pointless, please recognize that you haven't come down from a mountain with stone tablets that say, "Minecraft is shit."
What you are witnessing is a gamer who plays video games for reasons different than yourself. That's a good thing. People with different opinions are interesting precisely because they're not like you.

Of course, if you're a gamer, I can give you a free pass on this one. Go troll a forum. It's your right.
And if it isn't your right, then just know that's where I set the bar on my community. I don't expect anything better than a sea of people screaming about the one true game. My bar is very low.



But if you're in the industry? Fuck you. Get your shit together.


“Another thing that’s a problem in this industry is the focus on meaningful choices. I think it’s a dead end. If you’re working all day and you’re making choices in your life, it’s not interesting to be like, ‘do I save my family or do I climb up this building’. That’s exhausting, that’s not entertainment.” - Jeffrey Yohalem



The industry doesn't have a problem. Nobody is driving sixteen-wheelers full of E.T. cartridges to a landfill. Activision's CEO isn't jumping out of a window. Why the hell are there so many people who think they know what the problem with the industry is? And why are most of them writers for major game development studios? More than one philosophy of game design can exist in this universe. Video games are not Highlander.


The fact that Jeffrey is a writer probably compounds my annoyance, and it doesn't help that the guy is intelligent. I don't mind when a dumbass gets things wrong, but this guy spends the rest of the interview making a lot of interesting, solid points on his craft.
Except for that bit about movies and how the forefathers of film were all artists with vision, and only now are video games beginning to ask the right questions and branch out to become meaningful. I've been hearing that shit for ten years, now; and I'll still be hearing it for another ten years. It's incredibly conceited.


Oh, and I should also probably mention that I'm butt-hurt about how Far Cry 3 is looking to be a serious departure from Far Cry 2. That's probably a factor that helped spawn this post.


And... There's also the possibility that Jeffrey was trolling on Kotaku. He seems like a high-concept sort of guy.

Danimal Cannon - Roots

I like chiptunes, but I love Danimal Cannon's Roots album. Square waves can do a lot more than imitate traditional instruments, and here's the proof.

Day Z

I've never played Day Z, but I've watched a ton of other people struggling through the game, and it's absolutely hypnotizing.

There are no rounds, no finish line, no objective except to survive. You're dropped into this ENORMOUS countryside that's been overrun by zombies (the crazy-fast kind), and if you want to last more than five minutes you're going to need water, food, and ammo; which leads to situations where you're sneaking into the ruins of a grocery store in some abandoned town hunting for a can of beans, praying you don't get the zeds' attention because if you're forced to fire off a shot, every zombie for a mile is going to come running.

But the most dangerous element of the game are the other players. They want to survive, too. They want your can of beans. They will fucking kill you.

Or maybe they'll help you out. It's your choice whether you want to step out from the treeline and flag them down or open fire before they even know what's happening.

The video above was recorded by Kilroy, who made a very impressive run through the game. Some things to keep in mind:

 - voice chat is in-game and affected by distance, which means you can communicate with anyone else in the game with your own voice, and you'll have to yell if they're far away or whisper if you don't want to attract attention. As a child of 90's dial-up PC gaming, I find this unbelievably cool.
 - This game is still hella alpha. Zombies have a bad habit of running through walls and stuttering.



More than anything, this game reminds me of the kind of tense, trust-no-one atmosphere that I'd get from playing Ultima Online. Except completely different.

War of the Arrows

Regardless of gender, you will grow chest hair after watching this movie!

I love you, Korea! Your movies kick ass, and they're just sitting around on Netflix streaming, next to shit like Cherry 2000. What's up with that, huh?

Do you know what makes for good action? Tension. Bringing a character to their limits and going further. Even if that character is supposed to be an over-the-top badass (especially if they're a super-badass), there needs to be clear limits to what your character can and can't do, even if those limits have nothing to do with the natural world. If those rules aren't well defined and ultimately tested then you can't have the tension (and immersion) that good action possesses.

I can't tell if that last paragraph is bullshit, but it felt right when I wrote it.
Anyways, War of the Arrows nails it. Fucking nails it.

Except, maybe, that jump across the river. It was like watching the bus from Speed.



Next up, I'm finally going to watch Oldboy, another Korean flick I've been looking forward to for a long time. Right from the beginning, this movie has a great premise, and a lot of creativity is going on here, and... Hold on... Where is this movie going?...

Oh, dear god... Fuck me, this isn't happening... This is not happening...

"Man, That Thing's Gonna End Up Eating Us!"

"Well then. We'll just have to eat him."

Dragons in video games are pretty awesome, but dragons that provide a physical presence instead of a pile of stats hidden under an art asset? That's even better.

Dragon's Dogma is all kinds of neat stuff. I played the demo and the crunchy physical interaction with your enemies makes for some fun combat, but around ten minutes in I found something about the game I really didn't like: I was not playing the role of a hero.

Mega Mash

Mega Mash belongs to the seven-genres-in-one-at-the-same-time genre. It's like if, in a level of Mario Bros, you also had to play Breakout and Bomberman in order to beat the level.

And it's not like you're just going from one game to the next in a linear fashion (which is probably what the image above looks like). Mega Mash demands a constant juggling act of genres where the physics and properties of everything around you is constantly changing, and you have to use these dynamic properties to your advantage.

For instance, I needed to get a block across a pit, so I threw the block into the sidescrolling shooter spaceship game, and because everything in sidescrolling shooters moves left and ignores gravity, the block just floated left over the pit. Neat!


Somehow, even Tetris is in here.


Go ahead. Runs in your browser.
But make sure to find a few solid hours, because you'll want to play through the whole thing. There's a lot of clever design behind the clever gimmick. Every level throws something completely new and challenging at you.

And I dare you not to immediately think of this when listening to the music.

Yet Another Art Print Purchase

For the past year, whenever I've purchased an art print (essentially, a really expensive poster that needs to be framed), I record my lack of financial responsibility on the blog. That way, when I'm broke, I can look back at my list of extraneous purchases and realize that I'm an idiot.

But I'm an idiot with an awesome piece of art!

I wasn't going to buy it, but then it was like, "free shipping for the next 24 hours!", so I would've been an idiot not to buy it, right?

Something about the geometry of isometric pixel art appeals to me on a very deep level.

Singing in Nier

The town you start in has this amazing music. Crazy mellow stuff. Entirely instrumental.

But, it gets even better when you approach the town's fountain, because Devola is there, belting out tunes that synch right in with the ambient music. And it's good.

Imagine how happy I was to pick up a quest called "The Ballad of the Twins" where my goal was to convince Devola and Popola to sing together. I pretty-much bought Nier because of the music, so the reward for this quest was way better than all the crap the townsfolk were giving me for running their errands.

I was stoked. The journey begins.