There are few things that irk me more than the animosity expressed towards individuals for mistakes they made in the past when they acknowledge whatever bad, awful, or questionable thing they did, and offer an apology. I am a person of very simple morals, believe that forgiveness should be granted to those who admit their faults and at the very least express a desire to reform their ways and become better people.
It upsets me whenever I see people dismiss this notion, claim that an apology was not good enough, that some vague unrealistic action is needed to make amends, or insinuate that these individuals are tainted and deserve to be rejected by society. Yet it happens regularly and, honestly, it makes me want to sever all ties and connections I have to anyone and anything, and immerse myself in isolation. But I won’t. I’ll still hold ties and biases because those things bring me happiness and a life devoid of happiness is a life hardly worth continuing.
Speaking of individuals whose work I am quite partial towards, Zeboyd Games, developers of Cosmic Star Heroine, recently announced a sequel to 2010’s Cthulhu Saves The World with Cthulhu Saves Christmas. Only a brief summary and some cover art were provided, indicating that the game will be a zany little adventure about Cthulhu and friends venturing off to save Santa Clause from the League of Christmas Evil in a hybridized RPG and life sim. No release dates or platforms were mentioned, but I am naturally quite privy to see how this game shapes up, and see how Zeboyd as a company plan on managing themselves going forward.
In short, Zeboyd founder and lead developer Robert Boyd has spoken in the past about a desire to make games under more flexible circumstances, identifying the risks attached with independent developers putting all their metaphorical eggs into one basket, as they did with Cosmic Star Heroine. Several ideas were thrown around since that game’s completion, such as Unramed Armaments and Rx Machina, but the general approach Boyd wishes to take with the studio going forward is to have them work on smaller more flexible titles, while building off their work on Cosmic Star Heroine. A strategy that I personally fully agree with.
Ever since China started allowing prim and proper game consoles to be sold legally within their country, Sony has taken particular interest in the territory, viewing it as a growing market that they could claim a stake of. It is also a place brimming with aspiring game developers who are developing a variety of promising titles that allows the Chinese game development scene to shine as part of what they dub the China Hero Project. A project that incidentally had a large presence at the latest Chinajoy event, and a lot of these titles looked appealing enough to earn a spot on my list. I could go through all of them, but I honestly had very little to say about the lot of them, so I’ll just go through ones that caught my fancy.
Such as ANNO: Mutationem, a cyberpunk action RPG that is immediately notable for how it blends and mingles pixel art with simplistic 3D environments that work together to create a distinctive and vivid world, which is also home to frantic combat driven by quick strategic blows. F.I.S.T., a dieselpunk metroidvania affair that centers around an anthropomorphic rabbit man with a giant metal first sported along his back that also turns into a drill. It certainly has a lot of machismo going for it from that premise alone, though I am a bit concerned about how zoomed out the camera is, and the fairly drab looking environments. But it still looks promising, and I’m always on the hunt for a nifty metroidvania. Or WENT: Refractor, a dystopian sci-fi visual novel with mind hacking puzzle segments, a branching storyline, and an art style that I’m personally quite fond of.
Some other stuff happened, like the Dragon Quest Hero being released for Smash Ultimate, new sales figures were reported for PS4 and Switch, and I stumbled across some information that I updated my recent Ramble on Pokemon Sword and Shield with, but that’s about all I have something significant to say about this week.
Header image comes from TV Tome Adventures Episode 073.5. The finale of a series that I adored back when I was 12… and I still kinda love it to this day, warts and all.
This was lovvely to read
Thank you. I’m surprised that anyone is looking at posts this old, but it is always nice to hear that people are enjoying my work. ^^