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It's been a while, a lot of it was probably burn out, stress and/or my vice on running away from problems. I really need to be more conscious about the hows and whys I need to stop being like that, cause I forgot how good it feels to develop games.

Personal problems aside. I've polished the game up a lot and it looks just that much better!

At this point I wanna finish this for me at the very least, and this game quickly began to look pretty good!

It always feels a little crazy when I can play the game without going through issues, and right now the only stuff I've encounter is with the saves and a minor easter egg not working.

(The default controls are arrows and z,x,c,v. I'm just a wierdo who plays with wasd. That's why I added button remapping in the first place lol)

I feel a little terrible about putting this off for so long but at least now I feel like I've been making a lot of progress this past week.

There are still a few small things I need to fix

Saves are still inconsistent and I don't have a art for the game's cover and title screen but honestly I'm wondering if I should just upload it and move on.

When the name Arika is brought up I'm sure most people think of the Street Fighter EX series along with it's spiritual successor Fighting EX Layer, however the studio founded by ex-Capcom employees actually quite a diverse catalog of titles. From the most frustrating Mega Man game ever conceived to the extremely charming and unique Rhythm game 'Technix' and it's sequel 'Technic Beat'

Technic Beat follows standard Rhythm game conventions, markers appear on-screen to the beat of the music playing and the player must sequentially activate each one with more points being awarded for how on beat you are.

The difference lies in that you control a character who must hover over circle markers to activate them in a small 3D stage. They appear on the ground and can even be picked up to overlap with other markers to activate them all in a chain. I personally found the emphasis on moving and positioning of your character in addition to rhythm and timing made this game more approachable to me than some of it's contemporaries.

The characters each have their own unique abilities and are very um...diverse? There's a doll, a toy robot, a platypus and a bear in a teddy bear costume (unfortunately Skullomania from Street Fighter EX is exclusive to the previous game).

The real star of the game is the music. Over 87 tracks are featured in a myriad of genres and subgenres. I'm not really a music person so I can't find the words to accurately describe how great this soundtrack is other than "I like how it sounds" but trust me the OST is amazing. In addition to original tracks there are also alot of remixed music from Namco arcade titles. Again not a music critic so all I can say is that they fucking rule.

The difficulty increase is very gradual and restarting is instant so it's not a big deal if you mess up. The level increase from 1 to 6 is very manageable, just difficult enough to keep you on your toes but once you get to the level 7 tracks you really have to start bringing your A game. Level 8 tracks are definitely for hardcore maniacs, markers pop in so fast it feels impossible.

Technic Beat is a sadly underrated game, atleast outside Japan. The fact uploads of the OST on youtube can get less than 1k views is a crime in of itself. If you have any affinity for the genre I cannot recommend this game enough.

some watercolor doodlessss