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@stellar-secrecy
storyteller hint: you need mermaid flesh, so you should go find the mermaid and get it from the mermaid
me:
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started the new Paranormasight and instantly got addicted to the diving minigame. Eventually I "moved on" with the "plot" or whatever but I'm just waiting patiently until I can do more diving minigame
so I did wind up maxing out stats and grabbing everything underwater before I got much further and while it's very fun to see all the other characters react to my high diving level I am starting to think maybe I shouldn't have hacked apart that mysterious chain over that ominous symbol.
but surely there will be no ill consequences to interacting with strange things in the interacting-with-strange-things-kills-people game series
started the new Paranormasight and instantly got addicted to the diving minigame. Eventually I "moved on" with the "plot" or whatever but I'm just waiting patiently until I can do more diving minigame
Just finished playing murders on the yangtze river and it was amazing. This game has everything: murder mysteries, competent and hot detectives, alters who aren't evil but just kind of cunty, cute sidekicks, family member-related angst, social commentary, extensive historical information about the Qing dynasty and forensic science in the 1900s, dog-petting mechanics, and accusing-dog-of-murder mechanics
an unexpected review of murders on the yangtze river, developed by omegames studio
All the screenshots are from Maybe Dennis on Youtube, your playthrough was very amusing!
Sometimes, the most hidden things are gems in disguise, and this was a lesson of giving chances for more unknown games. For context, I was watching a video from a youtuber I liked (can't remember who rn) and he casually mentioned this Ace Attorney-esque detective game set in 20th century China, and as a lover of detective fiction this piqued my interest immediately.
A quick search through the Steam page showed me a game entirely in mandarin, though, which quickly made me forget about it as it wasn't localized yet. But after Apothecary Diaries and my hiperfixation on studying the rich story of China, I couldn't forget the small sneak-peek I got on that random ass Steam page. As it was, the english localization had just come out, and I just had to test this obscure visual novel out. Little did I know I was in for a big surprise.
Murders on the Yangtze River is a short visual novel-style game in which you control a famous Chinese detective, Shen Chungping, as he unravels mysteries along the shore of the great Yellow River, all while looking for clues to a cold case of his past. After a beautiful and cinematic opening, the game opens to what looks like your regular Ace Attorney game but with severely lower quality for most assets, and a simpler look overall, which was a bit jarring to be honest.
Screenshot of the opening scene vs...
...the first scene of the game. Nothing terrible, just wasn't expecting the chibi characters lol
The game has all the signs of a passion project made by a small studio with little budget: you can see exactly where they could spend more time polishing the game and where corners had to be cut. It baffled me that even in the same sprite there were visible differences in the asset quality, with the mouth of some characters (even the main character) clearly becoming more pixelated when they spoke. As a graphic designer with aspirations to game design, I honestly didn't even know this was possible lmaooo
The translation was also rough in some parts, with some stuff just not getting translated at all! But I can also forgive that, because they seem honest mistakes and this is an issue easily solved with some patches here and there. Though I have to admit I was very curious to know what is written in these transitions between chapters while I was playing....
Look at this beautiful background!! I'm sold
But after you get used to these aspects and start to get into the story (don't give up early, I promise it is worth it), the story more than rewards you for it. Each case feels very rewarding to solve, slowly showing more of each character and connecting them to a plot much bigger than we could imagine, that intertwines itself with the very story of China in the 20th century.
And this is where Murders on the Yangtze Rivers shines so brightly. It breathes history and culture through every pore, and China's huge legacy is at the core of every moment. The lore, character dialogue and the very well done glossary of fun facts in the game (both of chinese culture and technical forensic knowledge) painted a rich picture of what was going on over there in the first decades of the 20th century. The slow decay of the Qing Dynasty, the modernization of the country vs the old traditions and values, the increased contact with foreign nations, the opium addiction that was ravaging the land; all this shapes the narrative and the lives of the characters inside it.
And I loved this game even more because this knowledge is pretty much new to me. China, to many americans (and by that I mean from the whole continent, u guys from US are not that special) is memefied and distorted to the point of caricature, or simply glossed over in school as some far away, mysterious country that you should be scared of because communism. Of course, I never believed in any of this bullshit, but it still hard to find chinese content over here.
This is what art is made for, to me. To transport you to a different experience, a different life you couldn't ever have imagined on your own. And I know that, just like with anime and japanese culture, when the art is also entertainment and sells a lot, it doesn't really paint a super realistic picture of its subject, so I also take some things with a grain of salt. Still, it is a way to see how Chinese people view themselves and their culture, which is much more than I ever got to experience. It was admirable to see such a love for their own history and faith in their future.
If anything, Murders on the Yangtze River made me enjoy a story so much it made me reasearch the real history, and that's enough to make me cherish this experience and respect the lesson it teaches. Even in a time of instability and turmoil, when foreign powers try to strip you of your rights, when you can't know what life will swing towards you in the next month, even less in the next year, you can still strive for a better life for your people through the strenght they already have inside them.
If what I said didn't really interest you, know that the core mechanics, charaters and plot do hold very well on their own even without me waxing poetic about China. Shen Chungping is a reliable and compelling main character and the cases had a myriad of different settings, characters and mysteries. Of course, some were weaker than others, but the introduction of different mechanics unique to some cases were more than enough for me to make those flaws irrelevant. Things like a fast paced debate with a conniving character, a break-in into a police station and a nightmare chase sequence might have been out of place had their mechanics been too complex, but the devs managed to turn them into fresh perspectives and bring more highs and lows that a more rigid gameplay like most visual novels can't really achieve.
It might be a silly game for people who like Ace Attorney and low stakes murder misteries, but the experience gave me a lot more than that! Murders on the Yangtze River is a hidden gem that I really hope gets more attention in the future.
★★★★☆
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drew Qifrey at the local chalk art festival today. fun clothing folds practice but has this man ever considered wearing a color other than white or black
if your character is from another country and u are an ace attorney writer u have two choices: make it up or germany
And no one will ever believe you
i had this exceptionally talented barber sent off to prison for a 15 year sentence for marrying the woman i’m in love with. i’ve been imprisoning the woman’s daughter ever since haha. his apartment’s also been empty ever since lmaooo. anyway it’s been 15 years and some exceptionally talented barber with a fake-sounding name just showed up out of nowhere and started living in that apartment and keeps asking me to show up for a cheap shave. seems totally unrelated to anything in my past and like a great deal, i should probably go
Sunrise on the Reaping is great overall and does exactly what a prequel should do (reframes the events of the original series; leans into the painful dramatic irony of how the reader knows the characters' fates but the characters don't) but the ending didn't quite land for me. details and spoilers under the cut.
so first off I would have loved to read an entire book that was just the last chapter, but I've reflected and I understand that "boy spirals into isolation and alcoholism" doesn't have mass appeal. I don't begrudge that arc not being deeply explored in a YA book.
What really didn't connect for me was Lenore Dove's death. Obviously she had to die, but it was too soon and too similar to Haymitch's family dying to have the emotional impact it deserved. I think there were ways to have her killed that would have better resonance with the themes, and been more convincing as to why he felt the need to push everyone else away as a result.
What I anticipated is that Haymitch wouldn't see Lenore Dove again for a long time after the Games. She was under arrest; she could have been shipped out of 12 to an unknown place, with no word for months but also no word of her death (and surely Snow would have forced him to know if she was dead? surely? no, she is alive, a hostage for his good behavior, and he can play that game, for as long as it takes. whatever it takes.)
Then it's the night before the next reaping, and a visitor knocks on his door....and she's completely fine, she's unharmed, pissed at the Capitol as always. An early birthday present. And then that night she dies. Probably the gumdrops wouldn't quite work by then, but there could be any other very similar means that puts Haymitch in the same situation of nightmares and guilt. But in this case the message is even more explicit: you can do everything right for the rest of your life and it will never make up for what you've already done. There's no point in hope.
...And of course, if she dies the night before his birthday, the chapter ends with sunrise on the reaping.
Or.
It's still just the same day or so after his family dies as in canon, and Lenore Dove shows up and there's no gumdrops, it's fine, and then within a week she is deathly ill. Appendicitis. Tuberculosis. Flu. Covid. Hell, even an accident that isn't an illness, maybe a fall from a tree in the woods. Anything that could have killed anyone, but it kills her.
But Haymitch sees Snow's hand in it. And crucially, the reader doesn't know whether he's right. We and Haymitch both have no reason to suspect it was his work other than it must be, but while the reader is left with the unsettled feeling of "maybe it was just a coincidence...?" Haymitch never once considers it might not have been Snow. Implicit submission. Propaganda, the perception of the infinite reach of the Capitol, is more powerful than evidence.
Anyway. The whole book felt like a series of successive punches to the gut and I really wanted the last one to be way harder than it was. If I was truly dedicated I'd write the fanfiction, but I'm just kicking around thoughts at the moment.
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a little while ago i was hanging out with some friends watching severance and at the same time i was browsing ao3 to look for specifically crossover severance fanfiction bc we wanted to see if any brave souls had mapped the innie/outie dynamics onto the miraculous ladybug love square, or vice versa. as of the time of looking they hadn't. conceptual favorites of what i saw there was anya mouthwashing x helly r. yuri and a fic where the cast of the owl house founds ricken's book. but this post is about any of that that this post is the about the fact that while we were doing this i said 'you know who could do a really great severed love square. narumitsu' and in the weeks since i have become increasingly delighted thinking about a world where miles edgeworth gets to essentially kill himself by stepping into an elevator every day.
it just works because if you were to ask miles edgeworth 'do you want to purge yourself of all personal memories to create a version of you that just exists to work' he would just be sad that he can't purge the personal memories from his outie too and if you were to ask phoenix wright 'are you willing to get brain surgery to stalk miles edgeworth at his dayjob' he would not even have to think about that question for a second. and i think innie edgeworth would have a great time being a corporate drone and just assume his hideous creeping dread and ambient despair are normal but outie edgeworth absolutely can not cope without getting to know details about or consciously participate in his own career. meanwhile outie phoenix is completely chilling and loves getting a paycheck he does not have to remember working for but innie phoenix is, to say the least, completely crashing out. thaats my story. thank you for listening.
this is how they caught aflogi progressive right
(original comic I made in 2022 below)
i bet Shakespeare watching Severance in the afterlife would be really mad he didn't think of this conceit first. think of the identity shenanigans he could have pulled off.
he'd also think there's not enough gender fuckery in the show. and he'd be right.
Thinking about Mio again.
Paranormasight is such a good game, y'all.
Video Game Recs - 2024
I played several video games this year, and while it's still 2024 I'm here to tell you which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.
Top five recommendations:
Murders on the Yangtze River
Paranormasight
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Ghost Trick
Paradise Killer
Below the cut are more details on these recs and all the other games I played this year, ordered chronologically.
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Also while I'm thinking about paradise killer again (good game glad I played it) [also full spoilers because yeah] I think the thing that sticks out to me the most in the "no matter what you do, you didn't change the system" department is the conversation with henry you get if you actually manage to save him. If you actually jump through all the hoops and dig into all the side tangents to completely absolve him, completely get him off the hook of every single thing he's ever been accused of and he's still there in the "drive off into the sunset and/or do some extrajudicial executions" segment to chat with.
Because like. You've done all that. You've Won, with respect to his story, you've Stood Up for the little guy, saved the day. And he's still in prison. He's still a disposable human sacrifice who's getting left behind while the powers that be condemn this entire reality to oblivion. He's still got a demon screaming bloody murder inside him. All you've won for him is the right to watch the world end, a few more hours of breath before his inevitable execution.
And like, damn! That's really potent! It makes you think of the other ways he's unsaveable-you can't give him the like decade of his life he spent in prison on the earlier accusations back, you can't undo the fuckhell of his entire setup as a fall guy for the administration, his very conception being tied up in their bullshit games, you can't undo the way disposable underclass in this society has permanently eviscerated his social existence! And at least assuming my memory of it is intact enough, he's still pretty bitter about all of that! You cannot as the One Person magical Video Game Protagonist really do anything to save him! It's Quite Potent!
finished Paranormasight and wow, wow wow wow, I think Murders on the Yangtze River still claims first place in terms of my favorite game I played this year, but Paranormasight is probably the best game.
The structure and pacing of the mystery is incredibly well done, such that I was piecing things together just ahead of the characters. It's weird and twisty and requires you to learn a whole set of rules for how the world of the game works, and kept me up at night just thinking through how certain things could have possibly happened within those rules — my favorite mystery gaming experience, and one I haven't gotten since AI:TSF.
The theming and atmosphere are incredibly immersive, and the characters are all believable and compelling! I generally speed through investigation/daily life segments of mystery visual novels, but I would happily spend another ten hours just hanging out with the characters or hearing their thoughts about every random background object, even the ones who are terrible people. (and who knew! you can have a good mystery game without misogynistic humor! are you listening Spike Chunsoft)
My only complaint is that the title is a lie. there are more than seven mysteries of Honjo.
