I finished Death end re;Quest this evening, and in the process of doing my final writeup on it I realised that this had been a great example of a game that really engages the brain on multiple levels.

There's the mechanical aspect, which starts off pretty straightforward but demands a bit more care and attention as you progress. I was particularly pleased that you can't just "overpower" the game, even in a New Game Plus run; although you can keep levelling beyond 99, you only get 5HP per level after that, and all the stats have a hard cap of 999 anyway, so there's an inherent limit to potential power. It's all about how you use it.

Then there's the narrative aspect, which I wrote more about today. The more I think about this, the more I like it. There are layers upon layers there, with a lot of musing on the nature of existence and the feelings we can attach to fictional characters and the experiences we have in fictional worlds.

It's definitely one of Compile Heart's most solid games to date in all its aspects, so if you're after an unusual, thoughtful and very enjoyable RPG with a strong touch of horror and mystery about it, I can highly recommend taking that journey.

$5+ Patrons, I'll get you some Death end re;Quest themed wallpaper tomorrow! 🙂

I watched an interesting panel earlier from a MAGfest of a few years back, where several YouTubers I enjoy discussed and shared some of the worst comments they'd received, both on and off YouTube. It was both extremely entertaining and rather sad.

I've been fairly fortunate over the years in that I haven't had that many obnoxious commenters. There have been a couple, to be sure, but when I say "a couple" I literally mean that — I can think of just two specific examples, neither of whom have bothered me for a while now.

And it's not a matter of not getting commenters either — I'm fortunate enough to see a few people in my Likes and comment sections on a fairly regular basis, some of whom I've come to think of as actual friends. This is certainly a far cry from what was shown off on this panel — and given said panel was a good few years back now, I suspect it's only gotten worse since then.

I feel extremely grateful that I don't have to deal with this, because I know I'd find it extremely upsetting. Whether the reason I don't have to put up with this is because I'm a relatively small scale creator or because I set appropriate expectations with the tone and style of my content, I'm not entirely sure. I just know that so far as avoiding comment hate goes… I seem to be doing something right for the moment!

Long may it continue, eh.

An exclusive behind-the-scenes video for you today, as I share with you the trials and tribulations I went through while attempting to prepare tomorrow's Atari ST A to Z video.

I haven't had "the giggles" like that for a long time, and while it was mildly annoying to not be able to get through the things I wanted to say, it was a uniquely joyful experience that I haven't had for quite some time. It was actually rather nostalgic.

There are two real reasons for this, both relating to my time at secondary school. The first was simply that my friends and I used to enjoy quietly and non-disruptively messing around in classes that we found quite easy or weren't particularly engaged with. To that end, we tended to have a "Rough Book" on hand, in which we'd doodle and draw cartoon strips, many of which got extremely offensive in nature. On more than one occasion, the stuff we'd been drawing (usually involving giant cocks) got to be so hilarious that we'd uncontrollably get the giggles, usually attracting the attention of the teacher in the process. Thankfully she never found out exactly what it was we were laughing at.

The second involves the Klik and Play game my friends and I made while we were in sixth form. This involved a fair amount of voice acting, and every recording session was an absolute delight, because no-one was able to get through more than one line at a time without pissing themselves laughing or deliberately doing something to throw the others off. It made these recording sessions take about ten times longer than they needed to, but we knew that going in; it was an opportunity to spend some time together laughing and enjoying ourselves.

Today's fit of the giggles was entirely by myself, which I guess could be seen as a bit sad, but hey, at least I was entertaining myself, and I hope you enjoyed sharing in that moment with me!

I've owned a copy of board game Pandemic Legacy for some time now, but have only just recently started actually playing it with my semi-regular board gaming friends. And we've been having a great time so far.

For the unfamiliar, a "Legacy" board game is one that you are intended to play multiple times over a long period, making permanent changes to the game as you go. And when I say "permanent", I mean permanent — you apply stickers to the board and cards, you tear up cards that are no longer relevant, you scratch off things to reveal secret things, you open sealed boxes and all manner of other exciting stuff. Over time, the game experience gradually changes so that it is still recognisable as the thing that it is based on, but now has a variety of other interesting elements that are at least partially the result of the way you and your friends have played.

Pandemic, meanwhile, is a game themed around the outbreak of disease around the globe. Working as a team, players must make use of their characters' special abilities to collect sets of cards, discover cures for the four diseases, treat outbreaks and ensure the world doesn't get overrun or fall into anarchic panic. I'm sure you can imagine how the "Legacy" elements build on this: disease mutations, cities falling into chaos after epidemics, the military getting involved… it's all very exciting.

So far my friends and I have played as far as March in the in-game year, and already a number of interesting elements have entered the mix. I'm loathe to spoil to many of these lest you want to play the game for yourself — the surprise really is part of the fun — but suffice to say, there's a really cool feeling of an ongoing "story" of your efforts to fight back against these deadly diseases, as well as a gradual escalation of both overall complexity and difficulty.

I shudder to think how chaotic December's games are going to get… things have been going reasonably well so far, but a lot can change in a month…!

I generally don't run into a lot of issues with YouTube, probably because I'm a small hobbyist creator doing things for fun. However, one consistently irritating issue I run into when it comes to putting The MoeGamer Podcast together is the dreaded Content ID.

For those unfamiliar with YouTube parlance, Content ID is the automated system whereby certain companies are able to automatically determine when you have used their material in a video, be it audio or video material. It's actually a rather clever system, because it is able to identify copyrighted content the moment the video becomes available.

The trouble with Content ID is that it doesn't bear Fair Use in mind — such as, say, the use of content in a podcast to discuss. You can appeal a Content ID issue, but this is a lengthy process, and when you're trying to get something released today, it's really not helpful.

Actually, a lot of the time, Content ID isn't even a major issue when it does come up. More often than not if I do get a hit, it means the owner of the original footage just has the option to monetise my content — in other words, having the option to put an ad on it and getting revenue instead of me. Since my YouTube vids aren't monetised anyway, I'm fine if companies want to do this.

However, where problems arise is when the companies in question decide to respond to Content ID issues by simply blocking your video from being played anywhere in the world, effectively making the time you spent rendering and uploading it time completely wasted. So far I've had that issue twice: once a while back with a Pokemon advert, and today with some footage from Apple's recent event where they announced Apple Arcade.

When this happens it's incredibly annoying, because there's no way to know it's going to happen until after you've rendered and uploaded your video, a process which takes a very long time when we're talking about a 2.5 hour podcast!

All this is a longwinded way of saying sorry, the video version of the new podcast will be up in a few hours! Blame Apple!

[After-the-fact note: This was all before the Great 2019 ProJared Controversy.]

I finished watching ProJared's playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club today. Even if you've experienced the game for yourself, I'd encourage you to give it a watch; it really reinforces what I said recently about him being an exemplary Let's Player.

The reason I say this is that Doki Doki Literature Club had the dubious honour of becoming something of a "meme game" shortly after its release, much like Undertale did. Jared, meanwhile, went in completely blind and refused to look up any information beforehand… And the series was all the better for it.

With anything that becomes a meme like DDLC did, there's inevitable backlash and cynicism after a while. And that's unfortunate, because watching it back, DDLC actually does a lot of interesting things really, really well, both in terms of its overall structure and the subject matter it explores.

This is one of several reasons I've been keen to step back from social media somewhat. The experience of so many things will be enhanced beyond measure by not having teenage edgelords memeing them into oblivion at every opportunity. Or at least not seeing those teenage edgelords memeing them into oblivion!

With this in mind, I'm excited to give Undertale a go in a year or two… 🙂

Stepping back from Twitter once again has been a good decision. And I feel like it might "stick" this time, because I'm feeling a whole bunch of interesting things that I haven't felt before on previous occasions when I've taken a Twitter break.

The most significant of these is probably the fact that the prospect of Twitter now causes me anxiety. Now, this is not a good thing in and of itself, but it is a sign that I recognise what a bad influence that site can be on one's life and mental wellbeing.

To explain what I mean, I have poked my head in on Twitter a couple of times on the last week, but only to see if I had any mentions or direct messages. I had a few, and no-one wanted to shout at me. Great. However, the moment I saw the main timeline, I felt an odd sensation somewhat akin to panic, weirdly, and I knew that I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. The tab was closed and I didn't even look at anything anyone had posted. I didn't want to know.

The other thing is that stepping back from Twitter allows one to put things into perspective somewhat. On Twitter everything is a massive deal, the worst thing that ever happened, literally killing people or something along those lines. And it's easy to get swept up in that hysteria — and it is hysteria — every time something mildly inconvenient happens. However, take a step back and think about the things that you're considering getting angry about, and almost a perfect ten times out of ten I can guarantee that they're probably not worth getting angry about — because there's nothing you can do about them, because they don't really affect you all that much, because there are infinitely better, more productive and more fun things you could be doing with your time.

I watched a video on YouTube earlier by someone I occasionally enjoy commentary on recent happenings by, because although he's an active participant in social media, he recognises when people are being silly. His most recent video highlighted an excellent example of this, and he still had people in his comments saying how wrong he was, "well actually"-ing and all that good stuff. When I was fully engaged with Twitter, I might have been right there with them; having not actively engaged with the site for several weeks now, I understand what he's saying and why.

So outside of daily posts promoting my content, channel, book and that stuff, you won't be seeing me around Twitter for the discernible future. There are plenty of means to get in touch with me, though! You can leave a comment or use the contact form on MoeGamer, you can leave a comment here on Patreon, you can send me a message through Patreon, or you can hit me up on Discord if you have that.

Twitter has become a negative influence in my life, and I don't need it. So out the window it goes — as a means of social interaction, anyway.

Good morning! I was so excited to finally be free of the day job for two weeks last night that I forgot to post here. Apologies. Well, here I am now.

So what are my plans for this first weekend of freedom? Well, a few things to do today. I have an Atari A to Z Flashback video to get up (which might be a bit later than usual because it's a slightly fiddly one to record), a podcast to record with Chris that will hopefully be with you all on Monday, and, of course, some games to play. I'm closing in on the end of Death end re;Quest now, so hopefully I will have that finished in the next couple of days and be ready to write about the story.

Beyond that, anything goes! Well, not literally anything, obviously, there are of course societal and legal restrictions and obligations in place, but aside from those boring realities, I'm fully intending to take full advantage of this two weeks off to do plenty of fun and creative things around the website and YouTube channel. I hope you enjoy whatever I come up with!

One of the things I find most annoying about a lot of modern — particularly ad-supported — content on the Web is how keen it is to interrupt you while you're in the middle of something.

I was looking at a site for some instructions on something or other earlier — I forget exactly what, since the experience ended up being more about the annoying factors than the actual content — and I was immediately interrupted by a cookie popup, which took me to a separate page where I couldn't read the article when I attempted to close it rather than clicking "accept". Once I went back, accepted the cookies and started reading the article, a video started playing at the top of the page. Then, after I'd stopped this, halfway through me reading the actual text, the page faded out and a sign "boinged" into place inviting me to subscribe to the site's mailing list. I closed the tab and looked for the information elsewhere.

This is an extreme example, but it seems to happen quite a bit, particularly with "advice" blogs and tech support sites. Elsewhere, we have things like Wikia's (sorry, "Fandom's") autoplaying videos, which not only are not affiliated directly with the wikis they appear on, but often get information wrong. (Look at the page for Ann Takamaki from Persona 5, for example; the video calls her "Ann Tensei", which is not a mistake someone maintaining a Shin Megami Tensei wiki would make!) Or one particular, specific annoyance, which is articles interrupting the flow of their own text with "You May Also Like…" links, sometimes before the writer has even gotten to the point. News sites (even ones one might typically believe to be "reputable") appear particularly prone to this, but I've seen some game sites do it too.

With all this in mind, it's no wonder that the average Internet user is assumed to have the attention span of a particularly hyperactive house fly. To me, it speaks volumes as to the lack of faith a site has in its content if it's already trying to direct people elsewhere even before the reader has finished looking at the thing they're currently looking at.

Maybe I'm just being an old fart, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to settle down to read something without being interrupted now and again!

First up, I see we have a new Patron! Welcome! Pull up a chair, I'm delighted you're here; thank you for your support.

Now, onto today's largely unstructured ramblings that only you dear Patrons get to enjoy.

My brain has already checked out and is on vacation, even though there's still two full days of the day job ahead of me before my blissful two weeks of time off. While it's been wandering through happy places that don't involve fighting terrible pieces of proprietary software doing things they were never designed for, I've been pondering exactly what I'm going to be doing during those days off.

For those who haven't been following, I have two full weeks off starting on Monday. My wife Andie is off gallivanting with some Final Fantasy XIV friends for a significant proportion of that time, and I am house/catsitting. I actually rather enjoy a "staycation" like this, as it allows me to get on with things I want to do rather than things I have to do.

So far I've determined that, besides the usual daily posts on MoeGamer, I'm going to get well ahead of schedule on all my video series. It will be good to get Atari A to Z in particular prepped ahead of time, because I've already pencilled in a whole bunch of games I want to cover, and I'm kind of champing at the bit to get started on those, but it will be very helpful for me to get a few weeks' worth of my more time-consuming series in the bag, too.

I'm also going to do what I've said I'd get back to doing for quite some time now, which is making some videos that are "readings" of articles. These are surprisingly time-consuming to produce despite resulting in shorter videos — largely due to the necessity of capturing specific pieces of footage rather than just a single play session — but I always like the results I end up with.

I think I'm going to focus on making some video versions of the Cover Game features first, as I feel their particularly long-form nature will make for a nice "documentary-style" presentation, but if anyone has any particular past content from MoeGamer they'd like to see in video form, please do let me know. I'm currently casually planning these to go out on Mondays, as presently I don't have a regular video feature on that day — the podcast does typically go out on a Monday, but the schedule for that is irregular due to Chris and I being available (and not exhausted) at varying times!

I've also been really eager to do some more experimenting with Visual Novel Maker as I haven't really had a chance to touch it since my initial feature on it a while back. I really want to bring the "Gamecast" back in some form, but perhaps less in its original format and more as simply an ongoing opportunity for me to indulge in some creative writing with these characters I've created. After all, we have the actual podcast now, so the Gamecast can be free to be whatever it wants to be. I dunno. We'll see!

Then I'm sure there'll be some games to play somewhere in all that, too…!

Anyway. Two more day job days to survive first… wish me luck.