Saturday Casual Gaming 235: Elephant Quest

Elephant Quest
From Armor Games, Jimp, and jmtb02
on Kongregate

Every so often, I like to go back to certain games after I've beaten them. I mean, me beating a game is a rare enough occurrence in and of itself that it's pretty noteworthy, but sometimes a game is good enough to return to. Elephant Quest is one such game.

This game is older than you'd think. Armor Games was pretty small when this game appeared on Kongregate, and I have many happy memories of getting stuck in that one block on level 8, blasting my way through Nudgers, and reveling in the fact that there was so much blue in this game! Seriously, it's old enough that blue was not back in vogue at the time. It was still in the barren wasteland of brown and gray.

Seriously, it's really blue. I love it.

Sadly, if you click on the merchant button, they no longer have gear through Armor Games, but the game is still available both there and on Kongregate!

Anyway, what is the story for this little platformer?

You are Elephant the Elephant (yes, that's seriously your name).

You are a dapper little pachyderm.

You're hanging out with the other elephants, who aren't named Elephant by the way (some are named Bob, Bobert, and Bobbington...), when the local ruffian, a bully named Woolly, shows up and decides what's his is his, but what's yours is his too. He ganks your bowler and books it.

Elephant is, understandably, heartbroken over this.

The rest of this game is your quest to regain your hat and beat down that mammoth! Sounds simple, right?

Well, it's kinda harder than it sounds. You're dropped, sans any instruction, into this screen, which has an adorable Yoshi's Crafted World-esque backdrop that I love.

What do? Well, you move with the arrow keys, apparently...

After clicking around (which activates the laser cannon on your back - yes you have a laser cannon, you really liked that hat), I eventually realized that the arrow keys move, so I approached the shiny yellow elephant. His name is Sprouts. A prompt to press the "down" arrow popped up, so I did so.

This activates a dialogue with Sprouts, who tells you what you've already figured out...
you use arrow keys to move, mouse to attack. Up key jumps. Down key interacts.

Sprouts is your first indication that this game is a bit silly. Okay, the fact that you're an elephant named Elephant toting laser cannons and going after a kleptomaniac woolly mammoth named Woolly might have been your first clue, but the fact remains, there are no serious moments in this game. Nothing is dour or dark or bitter. I mean, Elephant's pretty bitter about his bowler, but he's not going full Batman or anything.

The rest of the game is spent doing fetch-quests for other elephants, like hunting balloons for the Bob brothers (Bob, Bobert, and Bobbington), finding lost teddy bears or umbrellas, etc, while you hunt down Woolly. While you're doing these quests, literally everything in this world tries to kill you. Creatures, spikes, endless pits... the world hates elephants. Luckily, you've got a laser cannon or six to help you out, and the more you level up or complete quests, the more firepower and health you gain!

But how do you level up?

You shoot everything that's not an elephant. Seriously. Every moving thing wants you dead, so kill it first.

One of my favorite rooms is this one. I call it the Kill Pit.
You just sit up on the slope and shoot everything to death down there.
You also get the Yellow Key, which you'll need.

When you level up, the box with your level number will glow. You click on it and it takes you to the skill tree. Which is more of a skill jungle. Seriously, there's, like, a million little things to click on. The skill tree takes Credits (which you get about two of with every level), and when you spend them, you might get skill points (if you land on an orange, purple, green, or blue node) or health (red nodes). There are yellow nodes that give you a random node color, too, but they're pretty uncommon. Then, you take all of the skill points you just got from your nodes and head down to the teal part of the menu you're on.

This section is fairly self explanatory...

So you've got your points, you spend them on one of three different sub-skills per skill path. When you hit 25 points in a single section, you get a bonus. Acrobatics improves your jump height, Weapon Targeting gives you better aim with less jitter, Weapons makes your lasers hurt more, and the Miniphant Swarm gives you laser-shooting flying pygmy elephants who swarm around you and murder your foes. I like to max out the Swarm as quickly as possible.

You can also improve your damage resistance, health, how many credits you get per levelup, resistance to spike damage specifically, how fast you move, how quickly you regenerate health, how much XP you gain from quests, and "how cute you look".

The lavender bar on the menu takes you to the Level Map, which is... kinda simple. It's basically screenshots of the different levels with lines connecting the doors to each other. It's useful if you get lost, which you probably will, because the game is bigger than you'd expect from a Flash game from 2011.

The orange bar keeps track of your Quests, which will help you when you get confused about who needs what where and how you need to get it.

Then you've got the goldenrod bar at the bottom that takes you back to the game.

You can die in this game, by the way. If you get swarmed by Nudgers or something, they can absolutely kill you. Thankfully, I have yet to encounter a game-over screen in eight years of play. You just instantly respawn. This can be an issue if the flying enemies swarm you in the center of the level and you have to creep your way back to the door so you can leave, but aside from that, it's really useful.

Yes, you respawn where you fall. Yes, that can be very annoying.

But nothing makes the game bad. I had to restart once because there's a bug in Zone 8 where you can jump into a specific block and get trapped (though sometimes sufficient wiggling can release you), but even that was quaint and funny!

If you're absolute trash at platformers, love elephants, and want to shoot some weird slime birds with lasers, definitely give Elephant Quest a try!


Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Filmic Friday 235: The Aviator

The Aviator
2004; Martin Scorsese dir.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchette, Kate Beckinsale

I'm being given a wonderful opportunity to watch all of the great movies I missed out on due to either being a wuss or just... not liking DiCaprio when he was at the dawn of his career (since my older sisters were obsessssssssed). Today's review is for a movie I never thought I'd see, but I've been quoting it for years. I was sat down in front of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic about Howard Hughes starring DiCaprio and directed by Scorsese.

And it's so much better than I though it might be!
And I thought it'd be great, since it's Scorsese.

I'm big into period pieces (and apparently, so is Alec Baldwin, but I'll get into that later), so this was a fairly easy sell for me. Set in the 1920s-1940s, this film follows the rise and collapse of Howard Hughes, industrialist, filmmaker, and sufferer from OCD. I'm serious - this is one of the best takes on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I've seen in movies. It's not played as something silly or harmless - you see how it destroys everything it brushes past. Hughes is a slave to his delusions, which are so not helped by the fact that basically everyone is actually out to get him.

We start with his mother bathing him during one of the many outbreaks of disease he avoided as a child, and boy, does she seem a little crazy too. My guess is the OCD ran in his family. Maybe don't tell your child that he's not safe. Maybe tell him you'll do everything you can to protect him, instead.

Eventually, though, we come back to him as he's trying to shoot a totally bananas war movie and refusing to accept that, just maybe, he's going overboard. He reshoots everything multiple times (and waits for almost a year for cloud cover to shoot against), reshoots it again for sound, and even after the premier, which he was basically forced to hold, he's still trying to edit the thing!

Through it all, DiCaprio is fantastic, especially when playing off of a very put-upon John C Reilly.

The movie isn't afraid to show us the many loves of Howard Hughes, either, including the incomparable Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn!

Seriously, she's awesome!

This movie did, however, have me wondering if, perhaps, Hughes was a bit color blind. You see the blue in the picture above? That's all green. I'm not sure why there's green in any scenes with cameras but blue whenever it's the two of them or whenever he's away from cameras, but that's how it is. It's fascinating.

Regardless, the main pivot of the movie rests on the OCD and how it's making the eventual legal troubles between Hughes and Pan-Am's attempt at a monopoly on international air travel (assisted by Senator Brewster, played by Alan Alda). In some ways, the OCD helps - Hughes remembers details others would miss, fixates on strange things that come to mean something very important, and eventually proves that Alda's Senator is in Baldwin's CEO's pocket. I should clarify - Alec Baldwin is playing the CEO of Pan-Am, and he's basically bought out Maine's Senator, Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) so that he can seize control of the air.

It's very tense, and it's all set on the backdrop of a serious break from reality on Hughes' part where he secludes himself in his private theater, naked and alone, peeing in jars and babbling nonsensically while simultaneously trying to get the infamous Spruce Goose (an enormous wooden cargo/troop plane he was designing) to fly.

Spoilers, Pan-Am failed to make themselves the sole international carrier for the US, the Spruce Goose flew, and Howard Hughes totally lost his marbles.

But he was awesome as he did it.

I liked that the film was honest about how messed up the OCD made Hughes - compulsive handwashing, compulsive verbal repetition, detail-oriented obsession, and pathological rituals all control his life and alienate everyone he tries to love. He's a hard man to get along with - almost impossible - but he tries very hard to do everything right. Which is also a symptom of his OCD...

They also work with the fact that Howard Hughes, having been among aircraft and machinery for the bulk of his life, was very hard of hearing, which had plot significance several times, including (even as a joke) during his hearings in the Senate.

Alda is literally about ten feet away and Hughes cannot hear him without the headset.
Even with the headset, there are times he cannot hear properly.

All in all, if you like aircraft, history, Howard Hughes, Katherine Hepburn, good acting, and good cinematography, you should absolutely watch this movie.

It's well worth it!

Now, Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk 235: Study in Sorcery Con Leche

Today's subject: a Sorcery Con Leche study

I set about my morning as I often do - with chillhop and other calm music (and some coffee shop jazz) to get me in the mood as I flit about the kitchen and try to make the perfect balance of cocoa-to-coffee for breakfast. Of course, as soon as I turned around to bring the morning mocha back to the table, guess who had beaten me to it?

Thankfully, she let me set the mocha down before I took the pic...

She sat there through my entire first cup of mocha (I've had 3 today, I'm a terrible person), which meant I could not draw for about 45 minutes. It's a big mocha.

Thankfully, since the mochas are half-caff today (I didn't want to overdo the caffeine and I knew I'd be having a few cups), I'm not completely jittered out of my mind.

Although she certainly makes me feel crazy sometimes.

Eventually, however, she got down and crawled into one of her couch tents (how an 8lb cat can take up two whole couch cushions I'll never understand...) and I was able to finally start drawing.

Just as my mom came home for lunch. Ah well.

I still managed to start a bunch of sketches, though I'm not overly fond of any of them.

I plan on doing several of these "studies" where I just... draw a particular character over and over again until I don't hate what I'm looking at. Since I'm one of those people who always dislikes what they've drawn (but only when it's people, weirdly enough), I will settle for not instantly wanting to throw something out when I look at it.

If you're wondering about my process, here it is:

Basically, make a wire-frame form and estimate the position for the facial features.
Maybe add some clothing details if you're super ambitious or have very particular ideas.

When you're more or less happy with what your wireframe is providing, you can add more details.
I should not have inked this yet, but this is a study, so this will help me rough it out.

I will probably make a few more pages of Tim the Barista before I'm done.

On the back of my page, I made some notes and a new script for maybe next week:

SORCERY CON LECHE EP2
P1) LOGO
P2) TIM staring at CAP, CAP staring at TIM
P3) TIM gets up

• CAP: "Hey, I'm talking here! Talking cat!"

P4) TIM walking away

• TIM: "Knew I should've called that AC repair guy."
• CAP: "For f**** sake!"

Not particularly inspired, maybe, but I'm working on it :P

As for the notes, here you go:

• TIM'S PERSONALITY
• Generally pretty chill, but not about coffee. Then he's a jittery beast.
• Tim's a pretty grounded guy (no pun intended), so all of this magic stuff is a bit overwhelming. He just wants to make coffee, guys. Why are there wizards and dragons and why is his cat suddenly talking?!
• CAP'S PERSONALITY
• Kind of snarky, a little acerbic, used to magic and weirdness because he's a cat and they're all blase about magic - comes from centuries of utilization as witches' familiars...
• Cap is also obsessed with video games and secretly plays when Tim is not home. He also secretly applies to new jobs for Tim, whose loyalty, he feels, is misplaced with his current coffee shop.

That's all I have for now, but I promise you, things are going to get crazier than a talking Scottish Fold (with probably a Chicago accent, if I had to guess).

I think that'll about do it for me today, guys.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Wednesdaymania 235: AEW News

By now, everyone who loves wrestling has probably heard the news that Jon Moxley (aka Dean Ambrose) is going to have to miss his dream match with Kenny Omega at All Out. This is devastating not only for me as a fan, but for AEW as a company, and when the news broke, everyone was wild with speculation. Was it a Work? Was it a Shoot? What happened? Who would take Mox's place?!

It was not a Work (a wrestling carnie term that means that the story was fabricated to "work" the crowd, or to force a desired response). Jon Moxley is, in fact, going to be absent from All Out in just a few days. This is a Shoot (which I think may have come from the term "straight shooter", which can be taken to mean "genuine" or "honest" in Wrestling context). But what happened?

At some point in the last month or so, Jon Moxley appears to have injured his elbow. I don't know if it was during the hardcore match or some other time, but the injury occurred all the same. Now, imagine what wrestling with injuries is like for a moment. You're on the road, staying in unfamiliar hotels, and you don't know if the guy who wrestled before you pooped himself (which is absolutely a thing that can happen) in the ring. You're constantly being exposed to pathogens.

Unfortunately, the pathogen that Moxley has been exposed to (and contracted) is MRSA. That's basically a super staph infection. It's so bad he's going to have to have the bursa sac removed from his elbow surgically so it doesn't spread and take the arm.

This means that he's going to be out of All Out.

But Kenny's still on the card.

So what are AEW going to do?

Well, it would seem that this time the stars have aligned and one of the greats has volunteered to have this match.

It's PAC.

Who's PAC?

PAC might be more familiar to you as Adrian Neville. Yeah. The one with the Red Arrow finisher. The one who defies gravity. And Wellness Policies, since there's no way that musculature isn't assisted by certain performance-enhancing substances.

So the new match is Omega vs PAC. I'm super excited!

This will still be an incredible match. It's not going to have the great buildup it should have. It won't be the vicious match it should have been. That's disappointing. I'm not the only one disappointed.

But even though it's disappointing to lose Mox for this match, it's still going to be insane. PAC is a wrestling god. Kenny is a Best Bout Machine. It's gonna be great!

Now, there was one other bit of news that made me very happy.

Tony Schiavone, once the voice of WCW, now a voice for MLW, is also going to be a voice for AEW!

How flipping cool is that?! The guy is awesome. Hopefully this means that there will be greater cooperation among net-based Indies now, especially AEW and MLW. This can only mean better money for everyone.

Obviously they can't crossover on TV, since they're shown on competing stations, but it's still interesting to see some cooperation starting off!

I think that'll do it for me today, folks!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday 235

I'll admit it, I was up for a couple hours before I started this blog. I'm on my second cup of cocoa, I feel like taking a nice nap, and I'm watching my cat sleep. It's a lazy day, I think.

With a September sky (in late August) overhead, a steady breeze rolling waves through the willow branches outside my kitchen windows, and a glorious temperature of 68℉ (~20℃) with 56% humidity, it's a truly glorious day. I should take some crochet outside and nap in the sun. I really should.

I probably won't because I'm lazy.

I've got plans for this week, so let me throw them at you:

• Tomorrow I'm talking about the latest news from AEW
• Thursday I'm working on more art - either new sketchy comics or building up older sketches.
• Friday I believe I'm going to write about a movie I watched recently...
• Saturday's game is a bit up in the air, since I haven't found one to focus on yet :P
• Sunday's another noodle review!
• Next Monday, I'll reveal the basic plan for my next undertaking. Spoilers: I cannot drag this one out 16 weeks, there's not enough project for it.
• Next Tuesday, I'll be blabbing at you once more!

So that's my plan for the next week or so. I also plan to do the following:

• Read a book!
• Write more for The Gimmicksmith and/or Byrd.
• Work on a couple of older crochet projects that I've been putting off...
• Snuggle with the cat
• Maybe eat some oatmeal. I dunno yet.

I'm kind of in love with the weather lately, seeing as I am a fall fanatic. I like wearing cool jackets and sweaters and breaking in my hats and fingerless gloves, so it's always a blast when the weather starts to cool. I'm heartbroken that this is only a brief reprieve from summer's wrath, which is apparently going to sneak back in right as September actually begins. Boo.

I wish there was a place I could live where it's basically October 365 days of the year. Cool, crisp, fall-like. And then I remember that I like swimming, and also that places where it's really comfortable all the time weather-wise inevitably have some other kind of uncontrollable meteorological or geologic drawback. So I'll content myself with the knowledge that for today, at least, I can pretend the world is an Autumnal paradise and dream of warm cider and cool weather.

Find some joy today, people.

Go Enjoy Something.

FC

Fiber Monday 235: Free At Last

It only took 16 weeks...

This morning, I woke up to birdsong and cold feet. That's a very pleasant change from the usual steaming discomfort of a coastal August, so I'll 100% accept it. Cool dry air had me scrambling for my previous shawl (the green one I made on here before this madness), and I set to work with my morning coffee.

With guest star: leftover apple crisp.

It only took a couple of extra hours, but I eventually had that beautiful feeling of a job finally done. I slip stitched my last stitch, snipped and wove my tails, and...

It was finally, finally over.

I am hereby freed from the tyranny of the Lost Souls Shawl!

This is a lovely pattern, to be sure, and I might remake it someday. With a thicker fiber. And a much bigger hook.

Because 16 weeks (which, let's be honest, was really more along the lines of 40 hours total working time or so...) is insane for any project smaller than a California King sized bedspread. This should have been a 3 week project.

But I'm inconsistent in my crochet hours, distractable, and just generally undisciplined, so it took as long as it took.

It's a lovely light and airy shawl, but there's one tiny issue I have with it...

Literally tiny...

It's... it's maybe a little small? Especially for all of the time and material?

My green shawl for scale. The wings of the larger shawl can be tied behind my back to
make the shawl into a shrug. I absolutely cannot do that with the LS Shawl.

Make no mistake, this is still a shawl, it's just... small. If I wore it with a sufficiently spoopy pin, it'd make a great addition to a witch costume, so that's how I'll treat it. It's a fashionable accessory rather than a purely functional one (like the green shawl, which is great for cold nights).

I'm going to keep working on the purple project I previewed on here before, and hopefully that'll be done sooner rather than later, lol!

My final note is this:

I'm probably going to revisit another part of the pattern, specifically the shells, to make a new shawl in the future. I'd just make it more like a "viral" shawl, which is called that because of how quickly it grows. I also wouldn't be using a lace-weight linen. That was very stupid of me.

Lessons learned, shawl complete, that's one less thing to worry about this week!

That's all from me today, folks!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 234: Breakfast with the Filthy Casual

So, I made more breakfast...

Back in the 1990s, they would tell us that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day", and even then I called nonsense on that noise. Breakfast is important, yeah, but in a modern society where the cycles of day-night are no longer a good indicator of when people have to be awake to do things like, I dunno, earn money to survive in this capitalist wasteland, it cannot be more important than any other food-to-face moment, nor can it be guaranteed to be taking place in the early hours of the day. Pointless rant aside, I never really bought into the whole sanctity of the morning meal bit, and by the time I was in high school, breakfast was usually a cup of coffee and whatever toothpaste I swallowed by the time I had to run out to my cousin's car.

Generally speaking, I'm still a coffee-for-breakfast kind of person, preferring small snacks throughout the day. That might be why I'm the human equivalent of a zeppelin. That and being a couch potato.

So what I'm saying is that I don't make breakfast very often.

When I do, however, I want it to be fantastic, so I don't tend to settle for cold breakfast cereals (which tend to get really gross and soggy in my house during the summer anyway). This morning, I was lucky enough to find some leftover pieces of ham steak in the fridge, enough eggs that I wouldn't feel guilty about eating them, and an English Muffin, which was buried in the back of the bread cupboard. I looked at my bounty and thought "boy, I'd love me some scrambled eggs and toast with some of that ham steak", so that's what I did.

If you don't feel like reading today, no worries! I have a video of today's cooking adventure (mercifully sans cat) at the end, so just scroll on down, and you won't be able to miss it!

Your ingredients:
Butter, 2 eggs, a chunk of precooked ham steak, an English Muffin, cooking spray,
salt, pepper, and whatever condiments for later.

To start with, I separated out my English Muffin (the package of which you can barely see peeking out behind that container of cooking spray). This can be easier said than done, since for whatever reason, fork-split English Muffins are rarely split evenly, which can be a pain to figure out. Thankfully, this one was even and thick, so I could jam my thumbs into the sides and peel the top from the bottom. I prefer this to slicing through an English Muffin with the bread knife, because I like the crumby texture from the pulling, rather than the smooth, boring texture from the knife.

This is how I like my English Muffins to look.
I don't know if these little guys have another name wherever you live.
I just know they're great with butter and/or jam, especially after toasting.

Once my breakfast bread was split, I took out some soft butter we had stowed in the cabinet to keep the cat from getting into it. It's been really nice the last few days, so we haven't had to worry about swift spoilage from the butter. If it were crazy hot, I'd have been stuck with rock-solid butter from the fridge.

Butter it up! This will get the toast nice and brown.

Once my English Muffin was deemed adequately buttered (which was, to be honest, a bit overkill, but hey, I don't eat breakfast often enough to care how much butter I'm using), I turned on the stovetop to low and set down my pan.

I also sipped at my 2 parts cocoa to 1 part coffee and 1 part Ovaltine mix
I've been mainlining since 2004. Morning Mocha 4 Life, yo.

And here's my English Muffin, sizzling away in the pan.

While the muffin was browning, I cracked two large eggs into a bowl and let them settle for a moment while I quickly maneuvered the ham steak from its package and into the pan with the toast. I figured I'd cook the slower stuff together, since eggs are a quick sizzle and serve, more often than not.

Two big ol' eggs. Yes, we store our eggs in the fridge here in the US.
It's something about the way we process eggs so they don't kill us.
... We still get a ton of salmonella cases every year.
Japan, what is your secret?!

Now, while I had my ham steak frying along, I noticed that my toast was quickly going from "almost there" to "yo, I need out, like, yesterday", so I awkwardly flopped the crispy, buttery English Muffin halves out of the pan and onto my plate. Why awkwardly? Because I still suck at using spatulas, even years into my "I guess I'm eating something I made" stage of life.

Photo blurriness aside, that's some delightfully crispy toast right there!

Meanwhile, I also skootched the ham steak towards the middle of the pan for optimum heating. Centered food is evenly cooked food, regardless of if it's in the microwave or the stovetop. I'm not getting into sous-vide cookery. I have 0 experience there and it terrifies me because it's... kinda... not something we've ever done in my family.

But enough about French water baths, let's check on that ham steak...
Looks like it's cooking along! See the brown marks on the bottom of the pan?
That's the brine caramelizing to the pan. Some people confuse that for blood or something.
This ham steak has been cured, brined, cooked, and refrigerated. If there's still blood, we've
got much bigger problems on our hands than we ever thought.

I like to flip my ham steak (or Canadian Bacon, if that's what I'm using, but I'm not) several times while heating it so that the browning is more even.

And also because it's fun.

Did we forget about our eggs? No? Good. While the ham steak is sizzling along (loudly), you'll want to take your eggs and beat them up with a fork. I use kind of a whisking motion with my fork, but however you find it works, do it. You want to make the entirety of the eggs more or less the color of the yolk.

And if they get a bit foamy, even better. That adds volume!

Don't forget to season your eggs. I used plain salt and pepper on mine, but they're great with a lot of flavors! Try them with cayenne or paprika! Add some chives or green onion! Mix in some milk or cream for extra protein and vitamins! Try a little mustard in there! It's all good!

But you don't want to add these eggs to a crowded pan, so now's a good time to check on your ham steak and see if it's ready to come out.

Mine was! It didn't need to be "cooked", since that happened before we got it.
It just needed to be heated through comfortably! The browning was a big added bonus, though.

Once your pan is free of any other food clutter, you're going to take it off the heat and add your lubricant, since the ham will have absorbed any leftover butter from the toast. I used a little cooking spray. Return the pan to the heat, add your eggs, grab a spatula or something, and start moving those eggs, yo. You want those suckers to keep moving every second they're in the pan so they don't burn. Burned eggs suck. Trust me. I have burned many an egg in my day. Ew.

Once they seem almost done, turn off the heat. The pan will finish the eggs as you carry them over to your plate. Roll them onto the plate and prepare yourself for condiments (and likely condemnation from food snobs).

My lovely meal, before.

After.
Do you see?

And of course, once you're finished cooking, it's time for the best part!

Cleanup!

Lol, no. It's eating. It's always eating. Dishes can wait for a full belly. But ideally, you'll have a chance to finish your dishes before you leave for your day.

You definitely want to eat your food before it goes cold, so hold off on dishes until after you've enjoyed your food!

If you've scrolled down this far, you deserve the video, so here you go:

That'll do it for me!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 234: Roguathia

Roguathia
by Seiyria on Kongregate

I like me some Rouguelike games, as you might have guessed, so when I see a newer game that sounds like it's going to be a Roguelike RPG, I'm going to try it out. What I found when I clicked on the link to Seiyria's Roguathia on Kongregate was... very different from what I'm used to, but I dig it.

When I say different, I mean it...

Roguathia is, as you might have guessed, a Roguelike RPG, but it's not like I'm used to seeing. If you zoom in on that screencap, you'll probably notice that the entire dungeon is rendered in ASCII, and everything is... well...

It looks like a DOS or Commodore game.

And I'm 100% there for it.

Guys, I grew up with DOS and Commodore games. It's like returning to my roots. It's like coming home. There's something comforting about this game. It doesn't hold your hand or tell you, really, anything about itself within the game itself. There doesn't appear to be any button for instructions, you have absolutely zero control over the heroes as they trudge through the dungeons, and you have no indication of what each of the three "currencies" are within the game, how they work, or what they're for until suddenly, upgrades appear and you may or may not be able to afford them.

So it's a DOS/Commodore game. It has no mercy. You don't need it.

You've got, for currencies, SP, KP, and VP. I don't understand what they are. I don't need to understand, really. All I need to know is that when SP upgrades appear, they primarily deal with character creation - different classes or races, bonuses to stats, maybe starting equipment? - and when KP upgrades appear, they're usually for the Dungeon modifiers - monsters, difficulty, depth of dungeon. I'm... lost as to what VP will get me. I think I earned some, but I was tired and just clicked "BUY" without paying much attention.

That is how it differs from a DOS or Commodore game. It's not a text-parser, it's a clicker!

So you might be trawling through your dungeon with an Evil Lizardman Archaeologist (which is 100% a thing you can get. Mine is named Esali, apparently) and if you end up with upgrades, you click on the yellow command to buy the upgrade. If you're not fond of the randomly generated critter you've got, or if they go really stupid and just... walk around the same room for 30 minutes (which is a real possibility), you can click on the Options tab and...

Commit Seppuku.

No joke.

You get your points (SP and KP, from what I can tell) and a new hero is generated to go through your hilariously labyrinthine dungeons.

I am really digging this game, and to the incredibly skilled programming nerd who generated this game: thank you. You did a really good job on this and it rocks!

Go check out Roguathia on Kongregate, guys. It's worth it!

And Go Enjoy Something!
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Filmic Friday 234: Murder at 1600

Murder at 1600
1997

A few weeks ago, I saw a movie called Murder at 1600. Now, I'm a big Wesley Snipes fan because Z showed me the Blade trilogy early on in our relationship, so finding out that there was a 1990s murder mystery starring Snipes in the White House was pretty exciting!

"Sex. Wealth. Power. The combination is murder."

I find it hilarious that it's just Snipes and Lane on the cover, considering who else is in this movie, but aside from that, this was a great, great time!

I mean, it opens with Snipes punching out an armed, dangerous, and distraught Charlie Rocket,
so you know it's going to be bizarre.

Snipes is a good cop in DC trying to keep his home, which is being taken over by eminent domain. The big reason he doesn't want to move? He has a bunch of Civil War miniatures filling the whole apartment. It's weird, but it also pays off. Which is weirder. Anyway, he and his partner are hanging out when he gets dragged into solving the murder of a secretary at the White House.

I like his partner. He's such a weirdo. Also, they act more married than most married people in movies.
I dig it.

So we've got Snipes in the White house, trying to solve a crime, and no one is cooperating. At least there's Diane Lane, who's trying to do her job as a Secret Service member.

While looking like Dana Sculley.

So Snipes and Lane eventually have to form what amounts to a two-person team fighting the White House, assassins, and even the rest of the Secret Service. The movie gets pretty wacky.

But it has great lighting and Snipes is hilarious.

My favorite part of this movie, though, is who isn't on the poster.

Why yes, that is Alan Alda taking a walk with Wesley Snipes while they discuss
whether or not the President's son is a murderer on top of being a philanderer.

Yeah, Alan Alda is one of the major roles in this flick.

If you've ever wanted to see a movie where Wesley Snipes and Alan Alda interact a whole bunch, here you go. Seriously though, it's awesome to watch these guys trying so hard in a movie with so little going for it, story-wise.

While all of the parts interlock appropriately, this story is a little too overburdened with detail, and it can be easy to get lost trying to follow the plot, such as it is.

Murder at 1600 is best enjoyed for what it is: a made-for-tv movie starring some awesome actors with some great cinematography.

So if you're looking for a movie to watch, check your local library for a copy of Murder at 1600, because it's worth its weight in popcorn!

Go Enjoy Something!
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