Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Salvador was settling into fatherhood and enjoying his job as Diego Lobo's gardener. He heard a surprising piece of news from Antonā "Mr. Lobo, he's one of us, and he hosts parties for men like us. I want you to come with me."
He knew what he meant, and felt somewhat hesitantā he liked women, though what he and Anton felt had been real and he'd come to terms with his desire for both sexes. "Anton, I have a wife. I can't just go around with those men. And Lobo is my employerā It'd be awkward."
"It does not have to be a date, Sal. Just as a friend, to make some new friends."
Sal reluctantly agreed, and found that he felt a sense of community, that he and Anton were not alone. He had rarely seen the interior of Diego's mansion, rarely seen the personal life of his employer. He started to see him as someone who could be a friend and mentor to him.
But it was at one of these events in June 1950, in the early morning hours, that the radio's music was interrupted with news from Washingtonā that the United States had entered the war in Korea.
I havenāt had any new jobs for a bit, but weāve been busy with holiday celebrations. Becca and Bobby are expecting their first child - I canāt believe weāll have a baby running around this little apartment soon!Ā
Weāve had letters from a few branches of our family. Everyone is well, but they miss their husbands and fathers. I miss my brothers - but Iāve heard from them recently, and I know theyāre still alright, somewhere over there.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Back before TSSZ News imploded, I would often do write-ups for many of the games at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE). SAGE is an annual online expo that I started all the way back in September of 2000. I personally ran SAGE for over a year, and remained deeply hands on for at least another two years as it continued to grow. The main focus of SAGE was primarily to showcase fangames, in particular Sonic fangames, but the event never limited itself to any one type of game. It's never been uncommon to see original games appear in the lineup -- especially now, given the modern indie scene.Ā
One such original game was Lloyd the Monkey, a bit of a strange game, written in Javascript of all things and run through a webpage. That by itself was notable enough to stand out from most of the games at SAGE, but Lloyd was also a completely original product created by someone who possibly seemed to be young and new to game development. Making games is no easy feat, especially when theyāre written in Javascript and youāre doing tons of original artwork yourself. Taken as that whole, the game impressed me, even if it was more than a little rough around the edges.
Now we have Lloyd the Monkey 2, written in Unity. The developer, Noah Meyer, sent me a Steam key in order to review the game. Up top, I just want to say how I think itās kind of brave to go all the way in putting the game on Steam and everything. It felt like just a few years ago, newer indie developers sort of had to work up to releasing their game on Steam, usually getting a few releases under their belt first. People view games differently when theyāre asked to pay for them, and critics may not be so willing to let circumstances influence their review. It can be a harsh world out there for a beginner.
Lloyd 2 is a much bigger, more ambitious game than the first. Whereas the original Lloyd didnāt even have sound effects, Lloyd 2 introduces voiced cutscenes, some of which are full-on animated cinematics. Quality is about what you would expect -- I would assume the developer sought out friends and acquaintances to voice characters in Lloyd 2, leading to wildly varying audio quality due to differences in recording hardware. Lloyd himself sounds fine, but some of the other characters are a bit quiet, while others have clear background noise. Nothing I heard was unlistenable, however.Ā
The story is also a little hard to follow. Not much is done to refresh our memories as to who anyone is or whatās going on, weāre just kind of thrown into the middle of things and turned loose. On one hand, itās nice that the story doesnāt slow the pace of the gameplay down too much. On the other, youāre given a map screen with different objectives to clear but thereās very little context as to what youāre doing or why. At one point I made my way to the end of a Power Plant level only to confront what appeared to be an evil monkey. Despite a whole cutscene involving a conversation between four or five different people, this evil monkey never seemed to say a single word. He just stood there in total silence with a sinister smile. Then I killed him.
I suppose maybe I missed something, however. With greater ambitions comes a number of unfortunate bugs in Lloyd 2, one of which happened not long after our monkey and his crew landed on planet Grecia. I entered what appeared to be a castle to talk to the Queen, but I think the game expected me to take a lower route, where I was apparently meant to overhear the Queen making secret preparations before my arrival. Instead, I took the direct route straight to her chambers, and triggered the cutscene with Lloyd standing in front of her while ominous music played, even though the camera was still clearly focused on the next floor down. I apparently still had some amount of control, because midway through her dialog I touched a teleporter that sent me to the gameās map screen before she was done talking. If that cutscene was meant to give context to what I was doing, I didnāt get a chance to see it.
That was one of the more harmless bugs in my time spent playing Lloyd 2. Harder to ignore was the fact that, within the first 30 seconds of getting control, I soft locked the game. Lloyd 2 opens with a short prologue section where you play as a man with black hair. If you decide to ignore the obvious and go left instead of right, you quickly run out of solid level tiles and begin falling indefinitely. Later areas feature invisible walls presumably to prevent this exact scenario, but for whatever reason they werenāt implemented in the prologue.Ā
For the most part, Lloyd 2 seems to be a co-op game. Many levels see Lloyd teamed up with an alien princess named Lura, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Mega Man X crossed with the tag mechanic from Sonic Maniaās Encore Mode. At the touch of a button, you can switch between the Swordsman Lloyd and the more projectile-based Luraā¦ assuming your partner is still alive, I guess. While playing alone, your partner is controlled by artificial intelligence, but itās incredibly basic and prone to accidentally committing suicide. That wouldnāt be such a big deal (considering Tails in Sonic 2 never acted in self-preservation either), but once your partner dies, they stay dead. Your only option to bring them back is to either restart the stage or hope another cutscene triggers, since theyāll magically spring back to life in order to say their dialog (though, again, usually only seconds before they fall back into the next death pit).Ā
This might not be much of a problem, depending on your viewpoint. Thereās not much incentive to switch between Lloyd and Lura, so once you pick whoever you think works the best, chances are, youāll just stick with them. You do unlock special team-up attacks after beating each boss, but this just reinforces the idea that Lloyd the Monkey 2 is meant to be experienced with another person holding a second controller, as most of the team-up attacks require both characters to do something specific that the single player artificial intelligence usually canāt interpret. Regardless, the team-up attacks never seem strictly necessary to progress, so they can be safely ignored if youāre playing solo.
I understand this is a pretty negative review Iāve written here. Lloyd the Monkey 2 aims high and tries to the best of its ability to get there. I assume it was a struggle to get even this far. Making games is hard work, and like any skill, takes practice to get good at. Just because this is Lloyd the Monkey 2 doesnāt mean Noah Meyer, its developer, is automatically an expert. I'm sure he's doing his best, and, quality aside, this game has a lot of heart put into it. This isnāt something cheap, quick, or lazy. Itās really, genuinely trying, and that matters.Ā
Iāve said a few times here and there that I see pieces of myself in the releases of Lloyd the Monkey, and I still see them here. I remember, for an early SAGE event, I was working on a fangame project of mine called The Fated Hour. I was probably already a year or two or maybe even three deep in the game by now, and after a lot of hyping up the community, this was their first chance to play the game. I spent months and months coding this iteration of my engine, and by my standards back then, it seemed like bleeding edge technology. I felt like I was going to blow everyone's minds.Ā
It was a mess. Few were impressed. Even worse, the game straight up didnāt even run correctly for some people. What followed was multiple patches, and even rebuilding some entire areas from scratch. My ambitions got the better of me and I unintentionally cut corners -- not because I was trying to cheap out on doing proper development, but just because I simply didnāt know any better. I may have done the best I knew how to do, but I was running faster than my body could keep up with and I stumbled.
When I see things like the missing invisible walls in the prologue, or how easily partner characters commit suicide by accident, I think back to that demo for The Fated Hour, and how I've been in this exact place myself. Thereās even a side quest in Lloyd 2 where you have to track a floating girl as she drifts through a level -- there was a nearly identical set piece in The Fated Hour, where you were chasing a robot. Itās a very strange feeling to see something like that and think, āIāve been here before.ā Like looking through a window at a younger version of yourself.
Itās true that I stumbled, but I didnāt let that stop me. I learned by doing. I kept going. Three years later, a game of mine was featured on TV, leading to more than a million downloads. The mistakes of past projects did not weigh me down and I soldiered onwards, newfound knowledge in hand.Ā
So where does that leave us with Lloyd the Monkey 2, then. Well, it's not exactly a game to compete with Super Mario Odyssey, but given the circumstances in which it was created, I don't think that's necessarily the point. As a learning experience clearly made for the fun of its own creation, I think it's a success. And who knows what awaits in the years to come?
