Renkon

i may write a proper post on substack or dreamwidth on this game but atm i'll just say if you can handle a rather substantive occult mystery written in fucking ALL-KANA, this free game is top-notch.

i got super hooked when i realized the game actually didn't do the scooby-doo find out the occult is actually some fake shit. it takes the supernatural elements and combines it with the mystery. it's an excellent 7-10 hours mystery game with damn good presentation.

hopefully, the writer writes more occult mysteries like this (preferably with kanji). this shit rules.

This week's game is Funky Jet, a combination of a single screen platformer and a beat 'em up that equips you with a jetpack and asks you to punch dudes so hard that they fly into each other. It's funky, it's fresh, and it's fun!

Funky Jet is a straightforward game with a curious name that doesn't take long to get through, but it still managed to make an impression on me. Who knew that taking the foundation of a single screen platformer and adding the core fundamentals of a beat 'em up would work so well? I'd go as far as to say that this game seems to be underestimated based on the lack of enthusiasm surrounding it on the internet! Thanks to lively visuals and proper feedback that gives your punches sufficient oomph, the act of playing Funky Jet just feels right and the game does a great job of empowering the player in a way that I imagine people don't usually expect from arcade games. They're not all "quarter munchers", y'know?

Beyond the fun idea and lighthearted nature lies a game that knows how to get mileage out of its mechanics. You're encouraged to launch enemies into each other and you have a jetpack and repositioning move that aid you in doing just that. The jetpack naturally gives you multidirectional movement which allows you to approach situations with an advantage, but certain enemy attacks are designed to make you think twice about your chosen direction. Successfully smashing enemies into each other gives you a bounty of power-ups, but the way the invincibility item works encourages you to think twice before picking it up during a lull in the action. There's some fine detail here in Funky Jet that practiced players can use to their advantage, but it's also the kind of game that lets you just jump in and have a good time. Definitely give it a go if you're looking for something breezy!

tw: discussion of suicide

what is beyond grief and sorrow and desperation? it is not Just desolation, but SELF-ANNIHILATION

crane tail is a game about an emotion that rots more deeply than suicide. it's a game about how suicidality isn't the worst feeling you could ever have. There Is Worse Than That.

i've been extremely close to hanging myself these past few days/weeks/months and the only reason i haven't is because i made a new guy to Deal with it. fever from the feverfew games becomes yuzu the wishmaker, but inviolet becomes geto the mirror-maker.

what that means is that fever from the [feverfew games] represents the irrepressible rage but the sincere belief that if you hold a wish in your heart that is mirrored by the wish in another's person heart, if two people make the same wish, it must certainly come true. but feverfew in sunhoney waits for a miracle that will never come.

sunhoney ends ambiguously, with the idea that sanemi, fever's best friend and one beloved, might come back for them. they could because it's never confirmed that they don't, but the whole point of sunhoney, the tragedy of sunhoney is that sanemi might never come for fever.

if sanemi never comes for fever, fever appears again in operator, operator and becomes the wishmaker waiting for a miracle, the right time to come.

operator, operator ends on a happy note if you leave it at that, if you believe that and only that.

but in context, you realize that YUZU is the wishmaker and that is a terrible, terrible thing. yuzu is from unspeakable things, and that title explains enough.

what it means to be the wishmaker is that you are in a cycle of granting your own wish, making a wish, and granting your own wish, and granting others' wishes, other selves' wishes, and never having your own granted, unless you grant it yourself.

to be the wishmaker means that you are granting your own wish (rather than waiting for a miracle).

but to be the mirror-maker means that you are inside a one-way mirror, which only functions when one side of the mirror is dark and the other is bright. from the dark side of the (interrogation) mirror, you can look through the pane of glass like a window.

but from the side that is flush with light, the window becomes a mirror, and you can only see yourself.

to be the mirror-maker means that you are making windows through which only you can see through, and through which others can only see themselves.

so the transition from wishmaker to mirror-maker is what crane tail is about.

For some people, Promons are pets. Others use them for gender. Myself... I study Promons as a profession.

Here are just some of the first 32 Promons to have been discovered. Could these cute little monsters be hiding the secret answer to Gender? Or maybe they're just chilling out?

Anyway, all of them are impatiently waiting to meet you! Are you ready to join in? If so, come right this way!