Hello again in­ter­ne­tari­nos! It’s that time of the month again! Wait, that could have been word­ed better…

Welcome to an­oth­er is­sue of SuperNerdLand Magazine!

So what is go­ing on around our parts, what’s new, and what are we up to? Glad you asked. And even if you did­n’t, I will tell you anyway.

I first want to give a hearty wel­come to a cou­ple of new ad­di­tions to the site! We are hap­py to add Robert Throne (@plasmarob on Twitter) and his wife to the ros­ter. Plasmarob comes to us as a con­trib­u­tor to the writ­ing side of the site, as well as bring­ing skills that could help shore up some of the back end as­pects of stuff as we go into the fu­ture. His wife, StormyDLoA, has joined on as an­oth­er ed­i­tor, hope­ful­ly be­ing able to catch the things that pass by me in the fu­ture! You can see her edit­ing work done on Plasmarob’s The Gaming Seed of Heroes piece in this issue.

You may have al­ready no­ticed by now that things are look­ing a bit dif­fer­ent around here! That’s right, I fi­nal­ly got to up­dat­ing the theme and look of the site. Massive shoutout to Themesaga for this theme. We’ve had to do our own cus­tomiza­tions, of course. But their Magazine Elite (we’re us­ing the free, not Pro) theme pro­vid­ed a fan­tas­tic base. I am still tweak­ing things here and there, es­pe­cial­ly with the added Night Mode tog­gle. Night Mode might still have an ob­ject or two that is a lit­tle too dark, but the meat and pota­toes of the site should be 100% view­able regardless.

Something that is get­ting mi­grat­ed due to the UI change are pod­casts and our LIVE page. After a lot of thought, it was ap­par­ent it would be bet­ter for me to put pod­casts and the live page on their sep­a­rate sub­do­mains. That way each bit of con­tent can be served in a man­ner that fits it specif­i­cal­ly (help­ful for the front and the back ends), and that way the mag­a­zine is­sue de­liv­ery can be fo­cused more. Currently, pod­casts are still avail­able on the main site via di­rect link, with their own pages com­ing soon!

Four Years of SuperNerdLand

The oth­er thing of note hap­pen­ing this month will be do­ing some of the fi­nal pol­ish­ing on our Fediverse so­cial net­work node, and it go­ing live for in­ter­nal pok­ing. Hopefully, pub­lic con­sump­tion by the end of June will be pos­si­ble! The only real thing I need to do is tweak some more of the CSS, be­cause bless their hearts but most pro­gram­mers for fe­di­verse soft­ware are not the best at UI/UX. Expect more word on that soon.

Another bit men­tioned in pre­vi­ous let­ters to you has been the PeerTube in­stall. I am go­ing to get to that soon, but it is still not a pri­ma­ry con­cern as we have our own self-hosted videos rock­ing al­ready. It would just be nice to test out how P2P de­liv­ery of video may help some of our users out there with poor­er in­ter­net, though. So I swear I am get­ting to that.

Something I do want to briefly men­tion be­fore let­ting you get on with the ar­ti­cle read­ing is our cus­tom stream­ing ser­vice and my se­ries on build-up said self-hosted stream­ing. Currently, I am go­ing through a very tight fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, so the fee that would have gone to WMSPanel went to oth­er things and that is shut off for the next cou­ple of weeks. We’ll get that cranked back on ASAP, and in the July is­sue you will get part two of said se­ries on self-hosted streaming!

That is ac­tu­al­ly as good a segue as any into some­thing I am pret­ty bad at typ­i­cal­ly, which is pro­mot­ing the ways you can help sup­port SuperNerdLand! We have a Patreon and a Subscribestar up as op­tions to help SuperNerdLand pay the bills and grow. Believe me, the read­ing and shar­ing of our con­tent is first and fore­most to us. We are not go­ing any­where ei­ther way, but if you ever want­ed to help us in oth­er ways then know we ap­pre­ci­ate it from the bot­tom of our hearts.

I won’t keep you any­more, though. Click down be­low the au­thor box or over on the right and check out the fan­tas­tic con­tent our au­thors have for you this month!

Persona is a game se­ries that means a lot to many dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Originally split­ting from the Shin Megami Tensei se­ries, Persona 1, known as Revelations: Persona was re­leased in 1996 and has con­tin­ued to be a sta­ple JRPG se­ries for many fans of the genre. The most re­cent ad­di­tion to the se­ries re­leased in 2017, Persona 5, has been a smash hit, re­ceiv­ing mas­sive crit­i­cal ac­claim and love from Persona fans and non-fans alike. The game has be­come some­what of a cul­tur­al icon, es­pe­cial­ly due to Joker, the main char­ac­ter, be­ing the first DLC char­ac­ter re­leased in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Many peo­ple have found a love for Persona 5 for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons, my­self in­clud­ed. Playing Persona 5 be­came part of my dai­ly rou­tine af­ter I bought it dur­ing a Black Friday sale, and it had a re­al­ly pos­i­tive in­flu­ence on me in ways I wasn’t expecting.

Routines can be great. There’s a cer­tain com­fort in a rou­tine that can help any­one con­quer their day to day life suc­cess­ful­ly. We es­tab­lish rou­tines as kids, like do­ing our home­work at cer­tain times, when to brush our teeth or even bed­times. Once we get old­er though, some­times these rou­tines can be­come de­struc­tive. Sometimes those rou­tines are so fa­mil­iar and so com­fort­able, that we don’t no­tice the neg­a­tive im­pact they have on our life.

Having that one ex­tra drink af­ter a hard day or that ex­tra cook­ie af­ter din­ner can be­come a bad habit, and that’s a hard habit to break once it be­comes part of your com­fort­able rou­tine. Sometimes, you need to be snapped out of those com­fort­able, de­struc­tive habits. During a time in my life where my rou­tine be­came com­fort­ably de­struc­tive, I had a wake­up call in the form of a song from a video game.

“If you hold on, life won’t change.”

When I first start­ed play­ing Persona 5, I was at a weird stage in my life. I was con­cerned about my­self, but not con­cerned enough to do a lot about it. My over­all health wasn’t aw­ful, I wasn’t dy­ing, but I knew it couldn’t be good still. “One day at a time” was my dai­ly af­fir­ma­tion. I tried to use it to calm my­self about my day to day anx­i­eties, but it didn’t work a lot of the time. I was still a bun­dle of nerves who had a re­al­ly hard time try­ing to re­lax even af­ter work. My phys­i­cal health wasn’t the best; I didn’t work out and hadn’t seen a doc­tor for a real check-up in a while. Not be­cause I didn’t have in­sur­ance, but be­cause I was afraid of what I would learn. While ig­no­rance isn’t bliss, it felt bet­ter than know­ing the truth. I would just aim to make it to the week­end, where I could re­lax for a few days be­fore hav­ing to con­tin­ue my “one day at a time” mantra.

During those week­ends and oth­er down­time I could find, I was neck deep into Persona 5. The only oth­er Persona game I had played be­fore this was Persona 4 Golden, which I re­al­ly en­joyed. That trend con­tin­ued with Persona 5 thanks to its aes­thet­ics and the gen­er­al fun I had with the game. I start­ed to in­cor­po­rate parts of the game into my dai­ly life, like chang­ing my ring­tone to some­thing from the game, or adding Morgana to the slideshow of back­grounds on my com­put­er. I also re­al­ly loved the mu­sic, so I start­ed lis­ten­ing to the sound­track more and more.

Listening to the sound­track, and re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to the lyrics, got me think­ing about the game in a dif­fer­ent way, and how it could be rel­e­vant to me. “If you hold on, life won’t change” was a line I found my­self fo­cus­ing on when­ev­er I heard it. Being me and be­ing gross­ly over an­a­lyt­i­cal about video games, es­pe­cial­ly the mu­sic, I be­gan think­ing about what that phrase meant. Holding onto some­thing be­cause it’s com­fort­able or easy is, well, easy. We can stay in a rhythm, in a rou­tine, be­cause it be­comes our norm. We get that sense of com­fort and ease from that rou­tine. That kind of com­fort can lead to some bad ruts and stag­nant times in your life, which it did in mine.

One time in par­tic­u­lar I re­mem­ber was a day when I bare­ly got enough sleep to func­tion but had to take my hap­py ass to work re­gard­less, like an adult. I de­cid­ed to lis­ten to the Persona 5 sound­track, specif­i­cal­ly “Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There”. I found my­self in a much bet­ter mood when I got to work, de­spite the lit­tle sleep I had. When I rec­og­nized how much the mu­sic could im­pact my mood and help me stay pos­i­tive, I start­ed re­al­ly lis­ten­ing to the mu­sic more and look­ing at the lyrics to songs like “Life Will Change” and “Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There”, which lead me to re­al­ly look­ing into the themes of the game it­self. Much of the main protagonist’s strug­gle is about how to take con­trol of their lives and rebel against an un­fair sys­tem. This made me re­al­ize some­thing important.

I was treat­ing my­self un­fair­ly. I was the un­fair sys­tem. I need­ed to rebel against my­self and the com­fort I had found in a self-destructive rou­tine. I know it prob­a­bly sounds in­sane, but it hit me when I went to the doc­tor and re­al­ized how much bet­ter I need­ed to take care of my­self. I was tak­ing care of every­one else as best I could but ne­glect­ed my­self in the process. This wasn’t un­fair just to me, but also every­one around me. If I re­al­ly want­ed to help the peo­ple I care about, then I need­ed to take care of my­self to make sure I could con­tin­ue to help. I need­ed to take care of me if I want­ed to achieve the life I want­ed. I held onto a pat­tern of self-destructive be­hav­ior be­cause it had be­come my com­fort­able rou­tine, my norm. At that point, I re­al­ized it was up to me to make that change. I couldn’t hold on anymore.

I made a vow to my­self that I would change. I start­ed cook­ing bet­ter meals and ex­er­cis­ing more to help change my body. I start­ed hold­ing my­self to a more rea­son­able stan­dard, al­low­ing my­self to breathe and for­give my­self more of­ten for the lit­tle mis­takes we all make in life. I want­ed to change my­self from the in­side out. I didn’t want to hold onto these bad habits any­more and I want­ed to make a change. “If you hold on, life won’t change” al­most be­came a mantra for me be­cause it was the dri­ving force be­hind keep­ing me go­ing to bet­ter my­self. I kept go­ing, and even when I would get up­set and feel like I was fail­ing, I would re­mem­ber that I couldn’t go back to those old habits if I want­ed to change, so I kept going.

That doctor’s ap­point­ment hap­pened in July of 2018, and I’m hap­py to re­port I’m tak­ing much bet­ter care of my­self in a mul­ti­tude of ways. I’m work­ing on los­ing weight (I have lost 33 pounds since that day, and have start­ed a new diet that has ac­cel­er­at­ed my weight loss). I’m work­ing on man­ag­ing my anx­i­ety so I can en­joy my life more pos­i­tive­ly. These changes I’ve made to my life have not only im­proved my­self, but they’ve helped im­prove the re­la­tion­ships I have with my friends and fam­i­ly. My fu­ture hus­band is even along for the ride with me, and we’ve been sup­port­ing each oth­er each step of the way. We de­cid­ed to­geth­er that we wouldn’t hold on any­more, and we would make our lives change for the better.

It’s fun­ny to think that this jour­ney to bet­ter my­self all stemmed from song lyrics, from a game where a talk­ing cat is con­stant­ly telling you to go to bed. Hilariously enough, go­ing to bed ear­li­er is also a thing that has start­ed to hap­pen more in my life. I found the con­fi­dence to make the changes in my life that have been need­ed, slow­ly but sure­ly, and my life is mov­ing in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion be­cause of it. “If you hold on, life won’t change” is such a sim­ple lyric, but it can hold a lot of mean­ing if you let it. While it may sound sil­ly that a mag­i­cal Japanese high school sim­u­la­tor can have this kind of im­pact on some­one, it can hap­pen. You just have to be will­ing to let a video game be more than just a game some­times. Sometimes, they can change your life.

Gaming. A word said with plea­sure by some and with dis­dain by oth­ers for decades. There’s a lot of im­agery at­tached with the word. Boxy retro con­soles and tan­gled cords in 80s fam­i­ly pho­tographs. Dice, char­ac­ter sheets, and fig­urines. An over­weight thirty-something liv­ing on Doritos in his family’s base­ment. The glow­ing desk look­ing like some­thing from a sci­ence fic­tion movie.

In my view, gam­ing com­mu­ni­ties don’t do a great job of ex­plain­ing why we love what we do. I don’t think most, if any, of us ful­ly un­der­stand why. I’ve been ex­am­in­ing this for some time now, and I’ve un­cov­ered some in­sights I think may ben­e­fit gamers to hear – whether you play table­top RPGs, trad­ing card games, or con­sole and PC video games.

The Gamer with 1000 Faces

Come back in time with me if you will, into Renaissance art. Imagine in your mind a tour of a meta-museum; a tour of all mu­se­ums at once. There’s Michelangelo’s glo­ri­ous stat­ues of David and The Pieta. Further down is the Mona Lisa and oth­er works of Da Vinci. In an­oth­er room lies the Venus de Milo, Bernini’s The Rape of Prosperina, then busts of Augustus, Hadrian, Caligula, and Nero.

What in­spired these works? Why were all these art pieces made? Did the artists only want to see if they could? Was their goal to win art com­pe­ti­tions? There was some­thing sig­nif­i­cant in the minds of these cre­ators. Most were paid com­mis­sions, but there must have been some­thing dri­ving them to de­vel­op such in­cred­i­ble skills in the first place.

Now come back to to­day, and search around for the most ex­pen­sive movies. They spent $285M mak­ing the 6th Harry Potter movie. Do you even re­mem­ber it? Talk about a risk. Then they made $900M in sales. That’s a lot of mon­ey chang­ing hands. And for what, so you can sit in a dirty chair eat­ing salty corn for a few hours? Apparently, we re­al­ly like be­ing told sto­ries. Titanic made $2.2B world­wide plus $1.2B in VHS/DVD. Yes, bil­lion – com­bined that’s over 3000 million.

But wait, we’re here to talk gam­ing right? Why aren’t the great­est games riv­et­ing sto­ries? Some don’t seem to have a sto­ry at all. Minecraft passed the top spot of Tetris’s 170M copies while this ar­ti­cle was be­ing writ­ten. I mean, you can count GTA V and Pokémon as sto­ry games, but Wii Sports and PUBG both sur­passed Skyrim and Diablo III in sales. Why? I think I have the an­swer, and I think I’ve spelled out enough ze­roes to make my point.

One of the as­pects the best games have is they fol­low the jour­ney of the ar­che­typ­al hero. They ei­ther tell a sto­ry, or more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, they make the play­er the hero of a sto­ry by chal­leng­ing them. I don’t think we teach the mon­o­myth, or hero’s jour­ney, as well as we should in the hu­man­i­ties. In my opin­ion, Joseph Campbell, who is cred­it­ed with pop­u­lar­iz­ing the con­cept, should be a house­hold name. Games are, as far as I can tell, the mod­ern in­ter­ac­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sto­ry­telling we see from mil­len­nia ago.

Perhaps, then, it isn’t too dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why some in­di­vid­u­als spend too much time play­ing games. They can be a unique source (or re­place­ment) of mean­ing and pur­pose in life. Who wouldn’t want to be a com­ic book hero? It’s rather ful­fill­ing to save the princess. They serve, as with oth­er en­ter­tain­ment, as an es­cape from every­day life. Unlike Netflix and Hulu shows how­ev­er, they don’t leave you want­i­ng more at the end of the last sea­son, so they can be­come habit-forming. Each en­ter­tain­ment form can be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive de­pend­ing on how it is con­sumed. Regarding the typ­i­cal com­plaint of time waste, the same prob­lems were shown with TV the year I was born.

Storytelling and com­pet­i­tive en­ter­tain­ment have been al­lur­ing for a long time. Games where you play the hero or anti-hero are an­cient. In an­oth­er time chil­dren on play­grounds played “cops and rob­bers”. The same game was played in colo­nial times, al­beit with the na­tives they feared as the bad guys. Sports and adult equiv­a­lents are an­cient too – we know the Olympics be­gan in an­cient Greece. And now we watch dig­i­tal glad­i­a­tors in es­ports competitions.

Enemy at the Gamer’s Gate

But what of gam­ing cul­ture? There’s a lot of de­bate over ethics in gam­ing nowa­days, and rather harsh words are said on so­cial me­dia to­wards some sub­cul­tures that spring up around games. To un­der­stand cul­tur­al war­fare around gam­ing, I again turn to the hu­man­i­ties, this time to phi­los­o­phy and art movements.

The 18^th and 19^th cen­tu­ry move­ments of the Enlightenment and Romanticism were rel­a­tive­ly aligned with the time­less “hero’s jour­ney” as we lat­er un­der­stood. Surely Joseph Campbell drew con­clu­sions from them. Rather than cite sources I en­cour­age you to learn more your­self. I of­fer you a side quest: look for words like “in­di­vid­ual” on the Romanticism Wikipedia page and read those pas­sages. If you ac­cept it, good luck. Don’t get lost in there.

But then, hor­rors of wars in the 20^th cen­tu­ry pro­found­ly af­fect­ed art and phi­los­o­phy. Here’s where the con­tro­ver­sy be­gins: I as­sert the evil forces de­feat­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly in world wars won in the artis­tic spaces and have in­fect­ed us ever since. Spicy enough as­ser­tion for you?

The 20^th cen­tu­ry brought forth more philo­soph­i­cal and art move­ments than ever, as we be­came more aware of move­ments as an idea. The ones I want to fo­cus on were re­jec­tions of the pre­vi­ous pat­terns of in­di­vid­u­al­ism and myth. Modernism in art grew from its roots in the 19^th into the 20^th cen­tu­ry, and as it did so, it be­came a de­sire to ex­per­i­ment with the “new”. This par­al­leled the ini­tial growth of Structuralism in ear­ly 1900s so­cial sci­ences in Europe, which sought to un­der­stand how every­thing fits to­geth­er. These are over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions but will do for our purposes.

Post-WWII, cyn­i­cal at­ti­tudes about life and oth­er peo­ple crept in, and by the 1960s, many fields of the hu­man­i­ties were be­ing over­tak­en by what are called Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism. I won’t point fin­gers here but suf­fice it to say they spread to us start­ing with Axis pow­ers, to French aca­d­e­mics, and then to west­ern uni­ver­si­ties. These move­ments in­sist on cyn­i­cal irony and re­jec­tion of even the en­light­en­ment ideals. They in­sist there is no truth, there is only opin­ion, and re­al­i­ty is sub­jec­tive to the point of hav­ing noth­ing ob­jec­tive about it what­so­ev­er. Everything is so­cial­ly con­struct­ed, morals are rel­a­tive, and every­thing is to be de­con­struct­ed. These forces took hold in every field of hu­man­i­ties in var­i­ous forms like the avant-garde, and have been in place so long, mod­ern cul­ture war­riors cite aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers that cite oth­er pa­pers to the point that ar­gu­ing against them is im­pos­si­ble with­out rewind­ing time.

Gaming de­vel­oped much lat­er, and did so con­trary to these dom­i­nant forces. Gaming is a per­for­mance art, like the­atre. Developers of games are the scriptwrit­ers and chore­o­g­ra­phers. One pos­si­ble com­par­i­son: gam­ing is a dance where there needn’t be an au­di­ence. Yet like dance, peo­ple will pay to see those who are the best at it. It’s no won­der then, that watch­ing peo­ple play games has grown, and that es­ports are be­com­ing more popular.

Imagine then, the out­rage post-modern forces have against a medi­um that builds on the very fields it had al­ready con­quered. Gaming in its best forms is the res­ur­rec­tion of myth and the clas­si­cal hero’s jour­ney act­ed out. In that re­gard, it con­tains an in­her­ent mean­ing that serves as a vac­ci­na­tion from such cri­tiques. Furthermore, char­ac­ters and scenery in­spire cos­tumes and fa­nart that res­ur­rect oth­er wings of the hu­man­i­ties. Many games such as Assassin’s Creed take you back to his­tor­i­cal set­tings. Fanfiction and lore add to mod­ern literature.

That’s what the “war” is all about. Most “sol­diers” on each side aren’t aware. It’s an eter­nal hu­man philo­soph­i­cal war that goes back fur­ther than we have record. Gaming is here to stay, and the fight be­tween its com­mu­ni­ties and ac­tivist acad­e­mia will last un­til the end of time, so be aware, but don’t waste too much time on it.

Gaming Soup for the Soul

One of the main rea­sons peo­ple stop play­ing games with friends, as far as I can tell, is life sim­ply gets in the way. To me this seems nat­ur­al – if your life be­comes filled with more mean­ing and pur­pose, even­tu­al­ly play­ing games can be­come in­fe­ri­or to real life. Getting mar­ried or hav­ing chil­dren can make dai­ly life more in­ter­est­ing than games. I spend more time than I need to feed­ing, burp­ing, and chang­ing my kids be­fore and af­ter naps. It’s not time wast­ed, be­cause I love them and my re­la­tion­ship with them means every­thing. As they get old­er, I’ll have more rea­sons to play with Legos and nerf guns than games. I’ll still in­tro­duce them to Minecraft and Legend of Zelda someday.

So, don’t mourn the loss of old dig­i­tal friends, most of them dis­ap­pear into their own life’s ad­ven­ture. Gaming will al­ways ex­ist be­cause of the mean­ing it has in our lives. Perhaps it touch­es upon our own hero’s jour­ney in life. I’m learn­ing to be a DM and I’m start­ing to think Dungeons and Dragons will some­day be­come a cru­cial part of my family.

Don’t let gam­ing be a sub­sti­tute for life. If we give the dev­il his due, that may be a mes­sage those against it might be fail­ing to con­vey. But let it en­hance your life. If you play Skyrim, you should for the same rea­sons you’ll re-watch Marvel movies. Go back and con­quer some­thing hard you strug­gled with in the past. Find video games to play with sib­lings and old col­lege roomies that now live thou­sands of miles away. Have the courage to talk in the chat about what you love most. Find ex­cus­es to make new friends. Learn to ap­ply what you learn from games to your heart and mind. If you haven’t, read how Martyr’s life was made bet­ter by a game.

When you are con­front­ed by peo­ple who don’t un­der­stand why peo­ple play games, and find watch­ing peo­ple play games even weird­er, tell them some­thing you’ve learned from the hu­man­i­ties. Tell them it can con­tain as much the­atre as pro sports. Show them gam­ing con­tains the seeds of heroes.

_{(MODERATE SPOILERS AHEAD!)}

It Would Be Great If You Did Not Exist (in its na­tive lan­guage, ti­tled “네가 없었으면 좋겠어”) is a man­hwa (Korean com­ic) by Carbonara. It hasn’t up­dat­ed in about a year, but the main re­la­tion­ship arc has finished.

The main char­ac­ters are Guk-Hwa, an ag­gres­sive woman, and Jang-Mi, a haughty woman. Both work in the fash­ion industry.

One of the things I dis­like most in many yuri man­ga is how the re­la­tion­ships are teased, leav­ing the read­er to won­der whether or not their ro­mance will work out. Or worse, the en­tire plot con­sist­ing of that very ques­tion of whether it will or won’t. This de­vice, I feel, is patent­ly overused; it seems to have be­come a lit­er­ary crutch used by yuri man­ga artists to cre­ate some sem­blance of dra­ma. However, this man­hwa (Korea’s equiv­a­lent of man­ga) that I’ve been read­ing re­cent­ly shakes that up, and does so well, to my great delight.

I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate how the sto­ry starts with telling you the girls are a cou­ple, and then launch­es into the sto­ry of how they wound up that way. There’s no “will they, won’t they”, “is this go­ing to be a tease?”, or any­thing of that na­ture. The dan­ger of this is that the ten­sion could be en­tire­ly re­moved if you know it’s go­ing to be a hap­py end­ing, but in the case of this man­hwa, the in­cred­i­bly in­tense sto­ry line is that much bet­ter for al­ready know­ing that they’re go­ing to end up to­geth­er. It’s not a spoil­er, it’s a feature!

How they meet each oth­er is pret­ty neat too. Guk-Hwa has a cheat­ing boyfriend — she finds this on his se­cret date with Jang-Mi. However, upon her catch­ing the pair, the two girls fall in love at first sight, in spite of how they “should” be en­e­mies over the guy. From that point, they then have to ex­plore how much they ac­tu­al­ly like each other.

I re­al­ly like how the girls’ per­son­al­i­ties are both kind of al­pha and hot-headed, and yet they both still do some of the more tra­di­tion­al “girly” things like paint their nails and mak­ing sure they look de­cent — it’s a nice break from the typ­i­cal “butch-femme” dy­nam­ic. Though, it is my as­sess­ment that Jang-Mi is the more dom­i­nant per­son­al­i­ty in the re­la­tion­ship. While ob­serv­ing their in­ter­ac­tions, and how they ini­tial­ly deal with their un­rec­og­nized feel­ings for each oth­er with such hos­tile de­nial, I would some­times say to my­self, “Tsun-tsun!” But that starts to stop once they fi­nal­ly get to­geth­er. The boyfriend is a los­er with no job; he owes his girl­friend mon­ey, and he’s re­al­ly just a no-life, use­less kind of per­son. But these pale in com­par­i­son to the abu­sive jerk he be­comes as the sto­ry pro­gress­es. It’s in­ter­est­ing see­ing what he does, and how his friends treat him, and how every­one changes as time goes on. There’s an­oth­er, sec­ondary cou­ple to watch as their re­la­tion­ship blooms, as well.

It Would Be Great If You Did Not Exist was my very first yuri sto­ry out of Korea, and while I wouldn’t have ex­pect­ed it, I think it’s kind of nice to be able to say that South Korea, de­spite its prob­lems with LGBT ac­cep­tance, has a good sto­ry about les­bian char­ac­ters. The sto­ry is un­fin­ished as of yet, but since I know the girls are go­ing to end up with a hap­py end­ing to­geth­er, I don’t mind that it’s not com­plete. It helps so much to know that this is­n’t some sort of tease or what­ev­er and that they will in­deed to get to­geth­er and lock all four lips. Because this is get­ting trans­lat­ed from Korean, the re­lease sched­ule for the English trans­la­tion is stag­gered, but it’s worth the read nonethe­less. If you can read Korean I’m sure you will have much less of a wait time. If you like yuri that breaks the mold, I re­al­ly rec­om­mend giv­ing it a try.

_{Edited by Indigo Alteria}

Is it any surprise, given my handle on this site, that I, along with my partner, made it mandatory for us to see Detective Pikachu in theaters?

Detective Pikachu, brought to us by Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, was received with optimism before its theater release by Pokémon fans across the internet, and similarly, I wanted to believe that this movie would break the mold of how various video game films have performed in theaters so far.

… And, okay, I also had to see it because of Pokémon. Yeah, I wore black and yellow Pikachu colors to the movie, don’t f*****g judge me.

I may have had a lot of hopes riding on this movie, and you know what they say – high expectations, low serenity. However, I am pleased to say that this movie lived up to the majority of its expectations in my book. Detective Pikachu juggles a lot of balls at once and manages to not drop a single one of them. I will say that it is not an excellent movie by any means. But it is, for sure, quite competent at everything it tries to do, and it still results in an enjoyable experience.

To be fair, if this movie had had fewer aspects to deal with, and had the same level of success, it would seem much more mediocre. But because it does so many things at a level of just-well-enough, it comes across as punching above its weight class. When you’re juggling only two or three balls, it’s boring unless you do some fancy tricks; conversely, it’s hard to do tricks if you’re juggling ten balls, but it’s still a spectacle.

Admittedly there will be a lot more excitement and fun for those who walked into the theater as Pokémon fans already, but even if you’re not, there is still plenty of excitement to be had. I will say that I have a lot of respect for this movie and the team that made it, because while they could have coasted on the nostalgia bait and made baseline money off of this, and they actively chose not to – to instead put some actual effort in, and achieve competency at minimum in every facet. I do feel that this is something that few studios do these days, and I want to give them a shout out for this.

The animation is top notch, 10 out of 10 here. This is a ball that, given the presence of non-real animals trying to be portrayed realistically, could not afford to be dropped, not even a little. The studio knew this and took the task seriously. The CGI is polished and smooth, even a bit believable (which is more than can be said for the Sonic trailer, oof). Ditto’s transformations are especially seamless. The incredible soaring landscapes of Ryme City are nothing to sneeze at either. Watch for the scene with the Morelull, it’s gorgeous!

While at times it was a bit disjointed, the comedy is good overall. For the jokes themselves, only one quip from Pikachu fell flat, but most of them were great, and many even qualified for the bar that Disney sets of jokes that will fly over the younger crowd’s heads but will not be missed by the adults – and are even subtly raunchy at times.

The action and battles are well done. This does tie in with the animation a lot, but the choreography of different Pokémon moves is on point, and we were cheering in our seats at some of the more heart-pounding special effects moments. Mewtwo, in particular, is a sight to behold, appropriately grand for the legendary Pokémon. The humans’ action scenes are quite exciting as well.

The plot was cohesive and intriguing for the most part. My partner and I are mystery buffs, and while we predicted most of the twists of the movie between us, there was one at the end that I didn’t predict until the reveal. Big props for that. Aside from the mystery bit, the rest of the plot, story, characterization, and flow, like most other aspects of this movie, isn’t fantastic or ground-breaking, yet still works. There’s also some mild but good lessons about family. I do like how from the beginning, the story assumes you understand a few basics about the Pokémon universe – what Pokéballs are and how they work, that Pokémon are elemental-powered monsters in all sizes and shapes, etc. – and doesn’t spend any time bashing viewers over the head with any cheesy introductions.

As for the acting, Ryan Reynolds, who many of us had long been excited for given the justice he gave to the character of Wade Wilson in Deadpool, is excellent in his voice role – it’s very believable and you forget that it’s Reynolds speaking when Pikachu opens his mouth. Mewtwo’s voice actors (plural! as they used a male and female actor alongside each other for that “ethereal” effect) are excellent as well.

Next to the exaggerated emoting of the CGI creatures, however, the human actors tend to look a bit flat – although, for the higher-emotion moments, when it really counts it does get better, so it’s good enough. Justice Smith does well as the main human character, but my human pick would be Kathryn Newton – she fits right in as rash and impulsive reporter-wannabe Lucy Stevens. Also, watch for celebrity appearances from Rita Ora and DJ Diplo!

But the real secret to why this movie was so good to begin with, is that the studio did not mess too much with the source material. The thing that made us so excited about this movie in the first place, a few months back, was hearing that the production team was communicating with various artists over the internet who had done realistic art of different Pokémon, and trying to learn from them and reference their work. One of these artists, RJ Palmer, was hired by the studio to assist with production design. This, to us, was already a sign that the studio, unlike so many other live-action videogame or anime movies, was going to respect its source material and fan expectations. We felt this would hopefully make for a better film, and it did.

We were not disappointed; my partner felt that it was “the best video game movie ever.” For once, we were not betrayed by Hollywood trying to make a quick buck. Scott Mendelson of Forbes put it better than I ever could:

“Detective Pikachu works because it's a good movie first and a promising franchise-starter or a brand cash-in second.”

Of course, he would be the exception in terms of critics liking this movie – as usual, this scored far better with audiences than with most critics – and as usual, this is an unfortunately common phenomenon with adapted properties and popcorn flicks.

To those of us who are long-time fans of the Pokémon franchise, who may have been afraid of this movie being along the lines of Dragonball Evolution and Super Mario Bros., this is a total breath of fresh air. It may not be a landmark by any means, but it is still thoroughly entertaining. Mendelson is right in that it put the lamentable cash-grabbing behavior common in media these days second to making a fun story, and to us two Pokéfans, it has paid off.

When I first heard about the live-action re­make of this movie years ago, I was both ex­cit­ed and scep­ti­cal. Excited to see what they will bring this to live-action and what changes they may bring, and I was scep­ti­cal be­cause the orig­i­nal movie was al­ready a clas­sic and even if it had small­er is­sues, the over­all movie just worked bril­liant­ly. Either way, I still promised my­self that this is go­ing to be the movie I will watch in cin­e­mas ASAP and do my best to be fair to.

Welp, I kept this promise, saw it re­cent­ly and now that I’m out of the cin­e­ma my heart is sure­ly not the same as it was.

A heads up, this re­view is spoil­er heavy. I know this is weird for a re­view, but trust me, the things I want to talk about rely on the de­tails which might be mi­nor to many, but they im­pact the over­all sto­ry and char­ac­ters heav­i­ly, de­spite the movie hav­ing more or less the same story-line as the 1992 version.

As much as I will try to be ob­jec­tive, I’m still a hu­man be­ing and there might be some stuff that are pure­ly sub­jec­tive opinions.

Now that is clear, let’s start this review!

The eas­i­est way for me to ex­plain how the movie is with­out many spoil­ers is that they took the orig­i­nal movie, set some key el­e­ments in that must be in no mat­ter what while also chang­ing oth­er things, such as char­ac­ter per­son­al­i­ties and how things hap­pen. This re­sults in hav­ing the same ba­sic sto­ry­line, but when you zoom in, the de­tails are quite dif­fer­ent from what we had. For the bet­ter or worse. The most no­tice­able changes are with the char­ac­ters and that’s where the main is­sues are for me.

It’s clear­ly no­tice­able they tried to tell more or less the same sto­ry with same char­ac­ter arcs for every­one, ex­cept for Jasmine. However, the char­ac­ters feel un­nat­ur­al and forced with how they were al­tered in this adaptation.

For ex­am­ple, Aladdin went from the guy who only steals food to sur­vive, street smart and with a heart of gold to ba­si­cal­ly a real thief. He got way dumb­er and just out­right un­lik­able at one point in the new ver­sion, to the point I couldn’t even sym­pa­thise with him, de­spite how hard they tried to make the au­di­ence feel bad for him.

Remember when in the an­i­mat­ed ver­sion, Aladdin got cold feet about be­com­ing sul­tan de­spite him be­ing just a street rat who want­ed love, and be­ing un­sure of his abil­i­ty to pull it off he broke his promise with Genie? Welp, that’s thrown out of the win­dow be­cause now he breaks the promise be­cause it’s bet­ter be­ing a prince… Oh and even af­ter this scene he acts like Genie should just be his lit­tle ser­vant be­cause he’s the mas­ter. And then the movie has the nerve to act like Aladdin changes for the bet­ter de­spite giv­ing next to no rea­son oth­er than just him singing a tune. Not only did this change make him less lik­able over­all, and not a true “Diamond in the Rough”, he gets even more dis­like­able as the movie progresses.

Now I do ad­mit that ear­ly on he did seem to be the Diamond in the Rough he was in the car­toon, de­spite him steal­ing for­tunes. He tried to give back the bracelet to Jasmine, to the point of stag­ing a break-in, and that was a nice touch, at least show­ing that de­spite be­ing an ac­tu­al thief, he has a good heart still. I re­al­ly liked that and had hoped for more bits like it.

Now onto Jasmine. It’s clear that the peo­ple be­hind this movie fo­cused on her the most. Not only does she get a very clear arc, but that arc also makes her more like what Aladdin should be as the movie pro­gress­es. Despite me lik­ing her char­ac­ter here per­son­al­ly, and I think she’s prob­a­bly a bet­ter el­e­ment of the movie, I can’t help but feel like they went a bit too far with her.

I get that feel­ing be­cause of all the books and oth­er source ma­te­r­i­al she’s sup­posed to be the best ruler for the peo­ple of Agrabah. Admittedly she does try to get to know her peo­ple here (al­though I found it fun­ny she did­n’t know that she needs to pay when she gave two loaves of bread to kids from a ven­dor), but I feel like her ide­olo­gies and prin­ci­ples are nev­er re­al­ly chal­lenged, not even by her fa­ther. This tells me that the cre­ators thought that Jasmine is al­ready fine as she is and only the peo­ple around are is­sues as they si­lence her.

They don’t even re­al­ly si­lence her, only Jafar does that, while every­one else lis­tens to her. Heck, even when Jafar be­comes Sultan, af­ter a speech from Jasmine every­one in the palace fol­lows her and calls her Sultana. I’m mixed on her, as part of me liked her and saw the orig­i­nal Jasmine in her, but I can’t help but feel like her ac­tu­al arc was not ex­e­cut­ed prop­er­ly and didn’t re­al­ly have her grow or learn, de­spite clear­ly get­ting from A to B in the sto­ry. The points are there, but the jour­ney from one point to an­oth­er is miss­ing. The movie is try­ing to tell me that there is a jour­ney there for her, but that mes­sage is hol­low be­cause she does not evolve.

I do have to say the ac­tors por­tray­ing Aladdin and Jasmine have chem­istry that works, es­pe­cial­ly in the first 30 min­utes. It was nice see­ing them in­ter­act­ing nat­u­ral­ly, even if this time it’s Jasmine who lies about her­self. Even in the sec­ond half where it’s weak­er, the “A Whole New World” scene is still very nice, and I would have loved more scenes like that.

Jafar is a shad­ow of him­self in this ver­sion, to the point where I couldn’t take him se­ri­ous­ly. His charis­ma and ma­nip­u­lat­ing na­ture are gone. Instead, we get a non­stop rag­ing kid who just wants to con­quer every­thing be­cause… he was a thief and was in prison for five years. Ehm… Just no. It’s down­right un­be­liev­able how he has be­came the roy­al ad­vi­sor when Iago (who is re­al­ly just a reg­u­lar par­rot here) is smarter than him. I guess the staff helped, but I just can’t see how he thinks he could rule any­thing, es­pe­cial­ly with­out the lamp.

Sorry Jafar fans, your man is gone, and in his place we got a gener­ic evil guy who is evil just be­cause peo­ple said so. No depth, no like­abil­i­ty. Nothing. Sure, they made him a bit dark­er (killed some­one and tor­tured a few peo­ple with his mag­ic), but with­out any real char­ac­ter­is­tics, it’s just hol­low and there for shock value.

The last char­ac­ter I want to ad­dress in de­tail is the Genie him­self, a ge­nie who has been trapped in the lamp for one thou­sand years be­fore Aladdin re­leas­es him. Where should I even be­gin with him? Throw every­thing that you knew about Genie be­fore this movie out the win­dow be­cause this ver­sion is noth­ing like that.

Now I did ex­pect that be­cause it’s Will Smith, and Disney clear­ly stat­ing they do not want to copy Robin Williams, was go­ing to be quite dif­fer­ent in the role, but I didn’t ex­pect them to change the very core of the char­ac­ter. Legit, he’s quite self­ish and most­ly cares about him­self and about his stuff, to the point where he tells Aladdin to stop both­er­ing him as he tries to have fun in the par­ty and even gets of­fend­ed for Aladdin touch­ing him. Heck, even in “Friend Like Me” the song was more about him and how he’s the best thing ever while not even know­ing Aladdin’s name (he even says Aladdin can’t be his real mas­ter). He’s a down­right jerk ex­cept on those key points in the sto­ry where he has to help Aladdin and fol­low the orig­i­nal movie. It sim­ply does not work and it feels like the most forced friend­ship ever.

I straight up dis­like this Genie.

I couldn’t care whether he be­came free or not be­cause he gave me no rea­son to care about him. Why should I care about a per­son who’d rather care about him­self non­stop, be­cause how dare a ge­nie not do what­ev­er the hell he wants? The fact that they had the gull to do a 180-degree turn in this ver­sion and act like Aladdin and Genie are the best bud­dies ever de­spite giv­ing us no rea­son for that till the drown­ing scene is in­fu­ri­at­ing! There’s also one more el­e­ment I want to talk re­lat­ed to this “Genie”, but lat­er as it’s mi­nor, but quite an­ger­ing to me still.

I know many will think this Genie is fine be­cause ba­si­cal­ly, it’s Will Smith there­fore it’s in­stant­ly good. However, for some­one like me who loved the Genie that we got from the orig­i­nal an­i­mat­ed fea­ture, this is just in­sult­ing. Genie was one of the most car­ing and kind­est souls I have ever seen in life or fic­tion. Despite him be­ing a slave and long­ing for free­dom, he still does his best to help peo­ple and be kind to them ei­ther by cheer­ing for them, en­ter­tain­ing them with his jokes, or sim­ply by show­ing kind­ness and car­ing. He’s a self­less sad clown that would do every­thing for his friends, even if it means giv­ing up his chance for free­dom. He sees the good in peo­ple fore­most and gives every­one a chance. His friend­ship with Aladdin to this day still touch­es my heart. How in the ac­tu­al Earth did we get from this to the al­most com­plete op­po­site? Even in the end­ing that is sup­posed to be hap­py and Genie fi­nal­ly gets free­dom in­stead of cry­ing in hap­pi­ness as I would when watch­ing the orig­i­nal I cried in see­ing how they made Genie such a jerk. Even now my heart is bleed­ing see­ing that my very favourite Disney char­ac­ter turned into this.

As for the oth­er char­ac­ters, there’s re­al­ly not much to talk about. Iago and the Sultan be­came one-note char­ac­ters and re­al­ly are just for­get­table, while the Prince and Dalia are just there… The prince is very dumb and even the char­ac­ters them­selves for­get about him while Dalia… I get what they were try­ing to go for with her. The fun­ny best friend of Jasmine who falls in love with Genie. If it sounds like some­thing you would see in fanfics, well, you are right. This is a straight OC sto­ry you find in Aladdin fanfics and not even a good one. The whole ro­mance not only is un­der­de­vel­oped with them only hav­ing one scene where they even in­ter­act with each oth­er (they don’t even know each other’s name!), but be­fore that scene they are al­ready all for the oth­er. What was the point of this whole plot­line oth­er than giv­ing a rea­son why Genie is a hu­man with kids in the open­ing scene?

A just over two-hour long movie and they couldn’t be both­ered to give any depth to this sub­plot? I can’t be­lieve fan fic­tion writ­ers did a bet­ter job at such a sto­ry­line than ac­tu­al pro­fes­sion­al writers!

To round out this part about the sto­ry and char­ac­ters, we have some changes such as re­mov­ing the no killing rule (no idea why be­cause they couldn’t even both­ered to ac­tu­al­ly do any­thing with it) and they kept up the whole bit where the king­dom of Ababwa is a run­ning gag. I guess they tried to fill this in as this was ques­tioned a bit in the orig­i­nal movie as well, but it not only was not fun­ny here, it brought up many cringy mo­ments and made Aladdin look dumb. Oh, and now they made sure peo­ple don’t think Genie owes a wish to Aladdin, as he made a con­tract with an un­con­scious Aladdin that he saves his life from drown­ing. Nothing too big, but it’s clear why they did it that way.

Now that we are fin­ished with the sto­ry and char­ac­ters, let’s talk about the sec­ond biggest part of the movie, the mu­sic, and the songs. Since I watched the movie in Hungarian, I did lis­ten to the sound­track in ad­vance just to get a pic­ture of what might be dif­fer­ent from the English ver­sions. For the most part, the tracks work, and Alan Menken is still good for mak­ing nice melodies by mix­ing old and new mu­sic tracks in.

The songs, how­ev­er, that’s a very mixed bag to say the least. Some def­i­nite­ly work, while some suf­fer from poor singing (songs with Will Smith are a prime ex­am­ple of this). Some are just a plain down­grade from the orig­i­nal ones like “Prince Ali”. It’s clear they tried to make them big­ger, with much more back­ground mu­sic in, while also try­ing to ad­just as to ac­com­mo­date Will Smith, but they end­ed up be­com­ing way too busy and noisy to the point where it’s hard to en­joy. Even “A Whole New World” los­es its charm a bit with those heavy drums in the back­ground. The only songs that re­al­ly worked for me were “One Jump Ahead”, “Arabian Nights” first half and “Speechless Part One”.

For some rea­son, most of the songs got some lyrics changes. They don’t ex­act­ly take you out the ex­pe­ri­ence, out­side in “Arabian Nights”, but they are quite no­tice­able and some­times baf­fling. I read an ar­ti­cle ear­li­er this week where Alan Menken said he changed the lyrics to be more cor­rect as the world has changed since. Alright, I get that, es­pe­cial­ly with “Arabian Nights”, but please tell me Mr. Menken, what was not cor­rect in “You are my only friend Abu” that need­ed to be changed to “I could use a friend or two”? (I ad­mit that maybe in the scene where Aladdin sang this Abu wasn’t there, but hon­est­ly for­got if that is so). It’s just a bit off-putting es­pe­cial­ly if you know the orig­i­nal songs. There was also a part in “Speechless Part Two” which is very weird. Basically, this song hap­pens af­ter Jafar takes over and is about to take Jasmine into the dun­geons. The song ba­si­cal­ly stops the movie and has Jasmine walk­ing around fu­ri­ous­ly while the peo­ple around her dis­ap­pear slow­ly but sure­ly. I get why was this put in, but the ex­e­cu­tion was quite confusing.

(Good news to Hungarian fans. The lyrics are most­ly how they were in the orig­i­nal movie and thank­ful­ly sung much bet­ter. I end­ed up singing “Arabian Nights”, “One Jump Ahead” and “A Whole New World” while watch­ing the movie. I know, most­ly nos­tal­gia fac­tor that I en­joyed that part, but hey, a good thing is good).

The spe­cial ef­fects were weird. Sometimes they looked great (Agrabah looks quite fan­tas­tic ac­tu­al­ly and the “A Whole New World” scene worked for me), while oth­er times it’s just down­right bad look­ing. Genie in his nor­mal form and in “Friend Like Me” looks no­tice­ably fake from the sub­par CGI, and Jafar in his Genie form is laughable.

The cos­tumes were a bit too Bollywood-ish some­times, but for the world they were with­in they worked enough, and I’d even ad­mit some of them looked re­al­ly nice.

The hu­mour is just bad. Really bad. Genie’s jokes are un­fun­ny and cringy, es­pe­cial­ly the in­ter­ac­tions be­tween him and Aladdin that are sup­posed to be fun­ny. Don’t even ex­pect any clever or adult-oriented jokes, be­cause you will be dis­ap­point­ed. The best ones were from the par­rot, who just kept say­ing ran­dom stuff that it just heard and that’s just em­bar­rass­ing (an­oth­er point for Hungarian dub is that they got the orig­i­nal VA of Iago for this movie. Not a big thing, but it was a pleas­ant surprise).

Honestly, as much as I tried to re­main fair with it, and even en­joyed some parts of it (es­pe­cial­ly the songs in the be­gin­ning, nos­tal­gia was too strong), I can­not for­give what they have done to beloved char­ac­ters and how the new char­ac­ters and el­e­ments not only are un­nec­es­sary and un­der­used, but also add a ma­jor plot­line for a new char­ac­ter, only to not give the min­i­mal ef­fort need­ed into flesh­ing it out, and it makes me fu­ri­ous! Sure, Aladdin 2019 on its own kind of works (though if you watch with ac­tu­al at­ten­tion you can see the is­sues in it clear­ly), but know­ing the orig­i­nal movie is out there to watch in­stead? This is in­sult­ing! I le­git stormed out of the cin­e­ma right as the cred­its start­ed to roll in (first time I did some­thing like that), fum­ing with anger. If this is what is sup­posed to be an im­prove­ment over the “flawed” orig­i­nal, I rather stick to old values.

If you are very ca­su­al about Aladdin and just take the whole movie as a stu­pid movie for kids, you can prob­a­bly watch it fine. But if you are a huge fan of the orig­i­nal movie like me, or of any char­ac­ters in it, or en­joy ac­tu­al good movies with well-thought-out char­ac­ters, just save your time and skip this mess. Go watch the orig­i­nal an­i­mat­ed movie. At least that’s a clas­sic for a very good rea­son, and it is­n’t go­ing anywhere.

So June is­n’t chock full of amaz­ing re­leas­es, but that does­n’t mean it is­n’t with­out a few highlights.

First, that comes to mind is the hype that Switch own­ers will be hav­ing over the up­com­ing Super Mario Maker 2. I can­not lie, if I had a Switch then I would be more ex­cit­ed as well.

The same goes for Crash Team Racing which is com­ing out for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch this month. We have heard sol­id word on a PC port of this beloved ti­tle, but we re­main con­fi­dent of one in the fu­ture giv­en the re­lease of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy on Steam. Another game that I am sad to not see on PC yet is Samurai Shodown. We are sure that one is go­ing to be a blast.

The ti­tle I am look­ing for­ward to was al­ready en­joyed im­mense­ly by Switch own­ers in 2018. Octopath Traveler is com­ing to Steam this month, and I per­son­al­ly can­not wait to fi­nal­ly get my hands on this one.

There were a hand­ful of oth­er ti­tles that were la­beled as be­ing re­leased in Q2 2019 or “First Half 2019” that I de­cid­ed not to list here be­cause if they haven’t giv­en a sol­id re­lease date with­in the month then I can­not be as­sured they won’t be delayed.

Any games you are look­ing for­ward to that are com­ing out this month or lat­er this year? Let us know!

_{(Dates via GamesPress.com, dates sub­ject to change.)}

Looking around itch.io is a fun en­deav­or for me. Previous months I have high­light­ed a lit­tle col­or­ful and fun free game, and a point and click ad­ven­ture birthed from a game jam that punch­es well above its weight. But those are not the only things on of­fer there. You can also find a lot of devs work­ing on games that might be priced in the fu­ture but are of­fer­ing game­play demos and snap­shots of their WIP for you to play and com­ment on now. Such is the cur­rent ob­ject of my ad­mi­ra­tion, Heidelberg 1693.

Heidelberg 1693 comes from Andrade Games, a German-based stu­dio with a few ti­tles un­der their belt. I haven’t played their pre­vi­ous ti­tles like 1917 — The Alien Invasion DX and SturmFront — The Mutant War be­fore, but I cer­tain­ly want to look into them now. Their in­spi­ra­tions are clear, and if you like retro-inspired ac­tion games with fic­tion­al his­to­ry twists, then this seems like the stu­dio for you.

Their cur­rent WIP has you play­ing as a mus­ke­teer in the late 15th cen­tu­ry, tasked by Louis XIV to take down his fic­tion­al ri­val the “Moonking”. The Moonking is at­tempt­ing to take over the Sun King’s em­pire, and it’s up to your rapi­er and mus­ket to stop him.

Heidelberg 1693 ends up play­ing like a more me­thod­i­cal plat­former along the lines of the old­er Prince of Persia games, rather than be­ing an action-filled blast fest like their pre­vi­ous ti­tles ap­pear to be. This plays very well with the na­ture of how gun­play works with a mus­ket, and the devs have worked very specif­i­cal­ly on the mus­ket me­chan­ics to make them feel right.

There is an in­ter­est­ing bal­ance go­ing on in the game be­cause you have a lim­it­ed num­ber of bul­lets, and the slow na­ture of re­load­ing, but you also must use your gun to ul­ti­mate­ly kill your en­e­mies. Just swish­ing your rapi­er at them will make them fall, but they will come back un­til you blast them.

The art­work is nice look­ing in a grim and dirty way that is very good at be­ing at­mos­pher­ic and is es­pe­cial­ly strik­ing when one is search­ing through the sea of what I will po­lite­ly call peo­ple’s test projects up on the free sec­tion of itch.io. The mu­sic is very fit­ting and has a haunt­ing feel to it, as should be in a tense zom­bie shooter.

For the price of free, I don’t think you can go wrong spend­ing a bit of time in Heidelberg 1693. If you don’t mind more pa­tient game play then give the de­mo’s three stages a stab and a shot!