if not us, then who?

HER0TALES. Independent, selective, crossover friendly hub blog for my POKÉMON PROTAGONIST MUSES. All muses are varying degrees of canon divergent. written by CALLIOPE (formerly cherabby). read my rules here.

SIDEBLOGS

KRIS (HGSS alt. canon), YUKI (Emerald), HIKARI/AKARI (Platinum & PLA), HEIDI (BW/"Grey" AU, OC), LEILANI (AU USUM), NICO (ScarVio, OC), HARLAN (PLZA, OC)

TAGS & HEADCANONS

TBA. lmao.

CONTENT WARNINGS

so imagine a tile-laying game where your objective is to place randomly drawn rooms on an empty floorplan to reach an objective on the other side of the map.

now imagine that this is taking place in some house of leaves ass mansion where the house simply does not conform to Logic and shuffles itself around every day. it is a run-based (roguelike / roguelite, to use another term) game where each day you start with a clean slate, but previous runs can give you bonuses that influence how subsequent days will shake out.

okay now make all of that part of a huge, slowly unfolding mystery surrounding your family, their relationship to the politics and structure of this world, and the mysterious building itself. every run you will uncover new hints about the greater mysteries and your place in them with every room holding Some Piece of another puzzle.

There are frankly a TON of great stories, both in the creature collector genre and outside of it, if you are willing to take a chance with indie games. Play more indie games!!!!

I'm going to shout out Cassette Beasts in particular as a non-pokemon creature collector that I adore. The battle system is a lot of fun and I love the way they implement the elemental strengths & weaknesses systems. The monster designs may not necessarily scratch the pokémon itch but they're pretty well thought out and clever. The plot and characters might not blow you away but it IS solid and consistent with a lot of love poured into it and some very cute and touching storylines.

But the big thing? Its fucking WEIRD. Like, you know that one HGSS Arceus event cutscene? With the inexplicable real actual photos thrown in? Yeah there's a bit of that weirdness in literally every boss fight. It's awesome, and the artistry on display for some of the boss designs is super cool and well worth the price of admission.

That being said! The ending of the latest arc of Horizons also directly tackled a Pokemon being able to say "I do not deserve to be treated like this, I'm leaving", so...

I desperately need to get into Digimon but ADHD hell brain refuses to engage, smh.