This is Aurelion Sol right?
In reference to Keliff’s ( https://www.twitch.tv/keliff ) “Draw With Roo” today, who was drawing Aurelion Sol on stream!
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Author: DarkOverord
I own this site! Go here instead to learn about me: https://darkoverord.info/about/do/
Strange Horticulture
Next game already! Strange Horticulture is, to use their phrasing, an “occult puzzle game” which is another way to say “puzzle game but there’s witches and other magical things”. It’s about identifying plants and their properties based on customer requests, and finding them based on notes and puzzles out on a world map. It’s got a story that isn’t outright grand, but enough to feel like it has depth despite it being short (I hit credits within 6 hours)
It does have replay value in going to completion though. I got really drawn in by trying to identify the plants without hints (that’s an achievement in the main story) and enjoying the feeling of satisfaction of doing that, maybe if you did it with hints, try again with out ’em!
I suspect there’ll be another game here by Pokémon Day 2024 but I guess Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 2 – The Indigo Disk is potentially the next one and man I have a lot of things to write down for that…
東方魔宝城 ~ Book of Star Mythology
This isn’t a particularly big or long post, but given I’m making an attempt to have a post for each game I beat I want to get something down, even if short!
Book of Star Mythology (BoSM) is one of those fan-games I’ve known about for ages, but like all the other big ones I’ve never got round to even though I know it’s extremely good. And now I can confirm that I agree with that!
I never said I did good at it though! Tbh only 23 deaths on a first run, and the majority are stage 5+ I could probably do this as a proper 1cc on Legacy Mode, but I mostly just wanted to finally play through it despite never touching it for YEARS.
The entire soundtrack is fantastic though, like that’s probably not a surprise when the final boss theme is by Wanwan but seriously, all the composers that came together for what was originally going to be an album turned game did such a great job! Starry Wisdom hasn’t gotten out of my head since tbh :’D
I’d recommend it! It’s great! There’s an English patch as well, updated by Azure (who worked on Copy Kitty and some other damakufu scripts in the past if anyone remembers them. I do! They were rad!), so it’s really worth that look in 😀
Get Vamp’d Nerd
There was shenanigans on social media and they didn’t leave my brain so here’s the end result of that. I’m mostly posting this now ‘cus it was very sudden for me to do this at 2AM this morning so this is technically the first art of 2024 :’D
This all came from a series of doodles that I’m leaving below!
Loopy New Vampire Adventures
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2023 Summary of Art
Yearly post time! I’ve things I guess to talk about, but click through the read more to get a closer look at each piece, my reflection on the piece (long or short) as well as my thoughts for the year, otherwise here’s the summary image:
Previous years: 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022
Decade Overview: 2010 – 2019
We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie
We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie Official Site
Hey it’s the next game I beat! All under the cut and nope I’m not skipping any at all, honest…
Okay that was a lie
There’s pretty good reason why there’s not a blog post for Vampire Survivors: Emergency Meeting. It’d be shorter than this Katamari review. Here I’ll do it now
Whoa it’s more Vampire Survivors except AMONG US WHOA. It plays exactly like Vampire survivors with a little twist by adding some “tasks” to the Polus Replica stage. The new characters can be extremely OP and so can the weapons, but that’s the fun thing about Vampire Survivors so hell yeah.
There done. “But DO, I can clearly see Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero – Part 2: The Indigo Disk is beaten there”, YES WELL, I do have a post set up for me to fill out (no really I do) however not long afterwards on the 20th of December, Pokémon announced the Epilogue to the DLC where the Original Gang visit Kitakami, and I have my doubts that it’ll only be Kitakami we’ll see there (or even a potential second epilogue at the Blueberry Academy) so I’m going to hold off on posting that until probably Pokémon Day 2024 (2023-02-27).
Anyway back to the actual post.
When they first announced Katamari Damacy REROLL I was legitimately hoping for a We Love Katamari REROLL. It was great getting to play the remake of the original game as it was never released in Europe (and I also got in to the series late whoops) but I could clearly tell that it was lacking things that I guess were introduced in WLK, like how even the slightest bump would be counted as a crash to the Katamari in contrast to WLK where you had a little leeway. Granted unlike the original Katamari Damacy I do actually own a copy of the original PS2 game!
Thanks for the sticker CEX… I’d take it off but those stickers are near impossible to remove
But while I do own a SCART to HDMI converter etc. it is a faff to make sure the PS2 is set up, the controllers all plugged in and so on. It’s a faff, so I was really looking forward to them actually doing a remake, sorry I mean REROLL, to bring what is to some the best Katamari game (I’m sure who you’ll ask that’ll change. I think I prefer Forever though) to modern consoles and Steam.
And from there well, the game is nearly exactly the same as the original. Some have claimed that this is “lazy” and the like, but honestly given how distinctly out there the Katamari games are, I think it’s fine to forward port the game with a bit of extra polish. Technically you could claim the REROLL games are “remasters” more than “remakes”, but I doubt that Bandai Namco had all the original assets laying around to hand to MONKEYCRAFT that aren’t HD assets from Katamari Forever (if they even had those assets laying around, Bamco’s done VERY little with Katamari between Forever and KDR which weren’t mobile games) so assets likely will have had to be remade.
I got the Cowbear though!
However I say “nearly” on purpose. There is an extra mode of five additional stages that are based on the King of All Cosmos’ memories when he was a young prince under the tutorship of his father, then King of All Cosmos now Former King of All Cosmos. These are more difficult missions than the standard game, which is appreciated even if I was very bad at them.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand. That’s it! Beyond this, and some DLC that adds in two dress up costumes (a little prince and a little king to hang off your antenna) and additonal music from the rest of the series (including Katamari on the Funk and Everlasting Love + You) nothing else is changed. Which given it’s not at full price like a modern game release now, is fine. Good work MONKEYCRAFT and letting me replay a game I love without a load of hassle.
PMEX Gamerip OST – 2023-10-26
‘Ello, ‘Ello, Hola! Ciao and Bonjour! It’s time for the Iono Zone2023-10-28 Update! This is actually two updates as I skipped over the last one as it was only two tracks.
The full collection is here, with relevant credits and folder structure.
Update only tracks are here.
Changelog in the archive and below:
Cobalt Core
I meant to do this sooner ‘cus I beat it on the 4th of December! Oh no I forgot! I actually don’t have too much to say really as it’s a quick snappy game!
The music was excellent, because of how short a loop was (success or fail) it didn’t feel like it was dragging on and combat was generally so snappy that it felt like you really had a lot of momentum going forward.
The way the OST was composed makes it really hard for me to go “yes this track”, and that’s a good thing! The music is clearly composed (and is evident from the OST with every battle track having an (Intro) track) so that you can on the fly swap between the tracks without a jarring interruption to the music, to the map, to a battle, to the map, to an event, to the map, and so on. But to make sure I pick a track and not go “All :)”, Self-Defense.
The story is simple, but honestly only once you’ve got it all, otherwise it is a ~mystery~. Which is great I love that. All the characters really stuck with me and even made me a little teary eyed at the end, what the heck how’d they do that to me!? Oh right it was mostly Riggs and Books.
That’s it! I put 35 hours in to it and if I say much more about it it’ll be spoilers! Books is already a spoiler but they’re too lovely not to have here, look at them breaking the fourth wall slightly and leaning on their character frame! Go play it if you like deck-builders, or rad soundtracks, or a possum who is just Hashtag Mood (that’s Riggs)
ZeroRanger
Oops it’s a game I beat (and it’s absolutely just a beat, not a complete…) and forgot to make any posts for (I beat it on the 12th of October)! Oh boy!
This is a really fun shmup, but man can it be tough! On the upside though it has a really lenient system to play it with a stage select and a fairly unique continues system. I absolutely cannot 1cc this though (though I feel like I got really close to 1cc-ing the first loop) haha… The power ups you can take do well to make the game play more how you want it to and boy did I land on a specific load-out (Type-C, Side, Charge, Drill) that honestly I struggled to play with the other options, oops!
The music in this game though is fantastic. Like ignoring that if you throw a growly synth at me I’ll go 👀, and the entire OST has that semi-FM synth feel semi-more modern instrumentalisation. It May Be Greenish is a fantastic opening stage theme, and not to compare it to another game, hits similar opening stage vibes that ZUN often does with his work (it’s probably the way the piano dances along the track) and given how shamefully long it took me to realise there’s a stage select, I heard it a lot :’D
The other tracks that really stand out to me are in sequence: Menacing, Descent At Last (two tracks separate tracks, but this vid has ’em paired and frankly that’s the best way to listen to them), and Despair. Like they’re spoilers as to what they play for but GOD DAMN they are all tied perfectly with where they play. And yes Despair absolutely has a vibe of a composition by ZUN again, which is probably deliberate 😛
If you aren’t late to the party like me and enjoy shmups, you absolutely need to at least give the demo a play!
EDIT 2024-04-21 – And now I’ve actually completed it
DarkOverord Occassus – 2023 Reference
🔞 Adult Ref under the cut 🔞
So DO’s old reference is from 2018. My artistic ability has improved, and also I Gender’d (well technically, I ungender’d) so here we are, new reference.
That I’ve been trying to do since March. I may or may not have mentioned that the Ferris reference was meant to be DO’s so… we’re here finally.
I don’t plan on doing another reference for a while now but I’m glad it’s done, it needed that update.
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