Thick lines with flat colors, but deliberately ugly. Think along the lines of Home Movies and Squidbillies.

I have two I can never quite get out of my head. Maybe one of you will happen to have one.

The first is a football flash advertgame on from Candystand. It was promoting Capri Sun. I can't remember it clearly, but you picked from a boy or girl player, and would remain stationary as the ball was passed to you. You click-dragged to kick the ball, but I don't remember if you were shooting goals or passing to other players. It was on a time limit, and when the timer ran up, it would show a hand reach into a cooler full of Capri Sun pouches, with the slogan "DIG DEEP" in these icy-colored letters. Last I could check, it was not on Flashpoint or Flash Museum, but I am hopeful that it will turn up eventually.

The second is a YouTube video I don't expect to ever see again. It was a Hotel Mario intro cutscene reanimation, possibly done as a school project. It was made in this grotesque but simplistic style which relied heavily on moving pre-drawn layers. About halfway through the video, the animator ran out of steam and devolved into moving the Mario/Luigi pieces randomly around the screen, resulting in isolated arms and legs floating about.

You are you. Your audience is your audience. The only form of cultivation you can do is to take stances and deliberately alienate the aspects of your fandom you consider undesirable.

The first example that comes to mind is a debate I saw around My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The word "everypony" was gradually changed to "everycreature" within the actual series, perhaps to counter the exclusionary ideals which had taken hold within that community. We still see holdouts insist upon "everypony" in fandom spaces, and complaints about the term "everycreature" being a form of kowtowing to diversity optics.

Some of those disapproved people give up when they feel the franchise doesn't want them, others dig their heels in. In summary, you can try to influence your audience, but you cannot control it.

I stole it

Do you rate your games on their start-to-crate time?

Adding to this, a picture only takes a moment to rate. A game or video requires some level of time investment to form a judgement on, so people desire more return on said investment. A minute vs a few seconds goes a long way in this age of content overload.

Totally not me hiding my star rating more often than not...

There are too many games. This is nobody's fault. The market gets bigger, the number of capable developers increases, and old games don't disappear as new ones are released.

It's a blessing and a curse. While you'll never be at a loss for something new to play, it means anything which intends to stay relevant is in a rat race to keep wowing players into returning. It means multiplayer games, especially large-scale ones, are fragmented to the point that they live and die in a manner of months, if not weeks. Even single-player games vanish too fast to keep up with if they're not phenomenally, unforgettably special.

MMO games can barely function as a result, so persistent communities are replaced with matchmaking queues. Why play the on your friend plays, when your other friend is playing another, and there's another one that you yourself prefer?

Even games which don't require a large playerbase fall into obscurity the moment they stop offering something fresh. How many times have you seen a complete game referred to as "dead" because it hasn't received updates in a while?

It might be best to just watch a video of the game; I couldn't actually find any images where you could see much of his body at all.

What do you think of Punch-Up from Dispatch?

When I was very young, my brother would play these gory stick figure games/movies that I found morbid and disgusting, yet intriguing enough for me to keep watching. I would peek over his shoulder as he explored the web and looked for violent flashes like that, but some of the things he found looked interesting enough that I wanted to check them out on my own. The Classroom in particular, I wanted to try myself.

Imagine my surprise when this wasn't a mere shock site. Between this and ArmorGames, it was like having my own little world of media outside watching the same three shows on cable TV and waiting for my parents to buy another PlayStation game for me. It being free to access opened up effectively endless discovery.

I'll always remember Blockslide 2!

I'll only count fully free games.

-Happy Wheels is a timeless classic. For its simplistic 2000s edge, its level editor has so much creative potential, you'll probably never see the ceiling of its potential truly met.

-Freedoom. This is kind of a cheat, but Freedom as a standalone game, and Freedom as an unrestricted, licensed-to-redistribute base for infinite WADs and mods makes it count as a free game with an absolutely solid base (Doom's gameplay) and freedom to expand tells me it belongs on this list.

-As mentioned by user ComedyBro88, MUGEN/Ikemen is a fully free fighting game engine with the potential to be whatever 2D fighter you want it to be. Whether it's a massive crossover of iconic fighters from established franchises or constructing a roster of your own original characters, this software will forever have its place as the ultimate fighting game.

-Cookie Clicker. Full disclosure, I can't get into this game. What I can say, however, is that its rapid, overwhelming, and lasting popularity reflect a brilliant exploitation of the psyche. Whatever Cookie Clicker did differently from the hundred million other idle games out there, it was some stroke of genius.

-Stepmania. Why get a thousand different DDR games when you can bring every favourite song from every favourite one together? When you can step along with thousands of songs that may never be officially licensed for a game of this kind? Stepmania is DDR without the bounds of commerce.

-Dwarf Fortress Classic is one of the deepest, broadest, most technically impressive games that's ever been made. While its future appears to be set within its paid version, there's nothing else that comes close to the granularity of its simulation nor the grandeur of its world.

-Luanti (Minetest) may be a shallow imitation of Minecraft's scope, but there's a few things it has over Minecraft which make me believe it's only that way through lack of community. Its configurable scripting, cross-version compatibility, and modular design mean it's free from all the burdens of Minecraft's closed development. No need for special launchers, unapproved hacks, and strict version-matching to keep it all working. Additionally, you can invite other players to your game without a dedicated server or port forwarding.

-The Powder Toy. While it was not the original of its kind, the sheer scope of what people do with this one, its astounding complexity yet stable performance, and vast potential impress me the most. Its continued development and loyal community tell me it's stood the test of time; no novelty gimmick would have lasted this long.

Maybe it has something to do with the cube in perspective used for its construction.

In a way, I already seem to fit a Halloween theme, but if you want something more costumed, maybe a vampire hunter!

I've been looking for something of specific purpose, rather than specific taste. Maybe you can still help.

-Launches quickly

-Resource impact not too high

-Linux native

-Quick to get into and get out of

-Does not require a launcher

So far, LBreakoutHD and our very own Cheesycoke's Downhill To Infinity fit the bill.

It could have been fun for the sickening novelty that is the virtual boy experience, but hardware dependent on a subscription is an insult to customers, and to the Virtual Boy itself. Their second try at the disaster device manages to be even worse than what it seems intended to satirize.

I'm actually impressed they managed to recreate the original disappointment.

For all the time I've spent doing things in video game, gm_bigcity takes the cake for time spent not doing things. There are other sandbox maps I like more, there are others which are more versatile or interesting, but there's something about bigcity that lets me lose the hours to mere simulated existence.

I was dead certain there was a Star Fox type game set in the Helldivers universe. I was insisting to my friend that it existed, that I had seen gameplay footage and possibly even a trailer.

No such thing.

I've started to feel this way about Abiotic Factor.

Don't get me wrong, I adore the game, but the pacing can feel a tad strange. It repeatedly builds up to an apparent climax only to repeat the same rising action with the same stakes and the same intensity. By the fourth or fifth time this happens, it comes across as a sort of limbo.

While I can see you're getting swamped here, I can't help throwing my hat in the ring here. Your style is just so, well, stylish. I've PM'd you some reference!

Props for making sure nobody gets cheated here!

This is something I struggle with myself. Much of what I upload is not intended as explicit material in its own right, but the designs and characteristics of the subjects depicted have deliberately sexualized elements. Since the purpose of those elements does tie back into overtly adult works, how does that factor into a piece without that intent or that focus?

The existence of sexualized character designs in published family-friendly works further muddies the water.

Playing with fire, eh?

Strangely, it was the rapid development of AI-generated content. It gave me a "now or never" feeling that I should make what I feel like without fixating on what would be "respectable".

I'd learned and experimented a fair bit before this, but I didn't put myself out there and start doing until now.

Draw old man blocks in perspective

At 3/9/24 03:12 AM, ColonelYuri wrote:

he's based loosely off all my experiences, applied as if it were one big metaphor or mirror to what I've experienced.

Now that I think about it, what is the true purpose of a self insert OC? It'd be interesting to hear your opinions on the matter.

I think this is a great way to do this! It's honest and accurate enough to be "you", but interesting and different enough to be a character worth making art of.

You didn't owe me anything! I appreciate you still getting to it even after all that.

It's a public post! If I wanted this to stay under wraps, I'd have wrote it in Notepad instead.

Utilize elements of both.

My kind of favourite self-insert is the type where one reinterprets their flaws into a type of beauty.

Overweight? No, you're thick and curvy.

Bony, lanky? Spritely, delicate grace.

Bad vision? Those glasses make you look like a classy intellectual.

Too old for this? You're mature, experienced, and command authority.

Even issues of personality, of lifestyle, of attitude, are easier to live with--and perhaps find healthier ways to account for--when you give yourself and others reason to appreciate who you really are.

I think you see where I'm going with this. Be yourself, but be your best self.

Regardless, I think you have a point - while it's certainly nothing that anyone should be burned at the stake for, it's pretty clear when someone treats their one or all of their socials/galleries as "free ad space" rather than something they actually engage with. You know that person will never acknowledge, maybe never even see what others in the community do. You can forget about collaboration of any kind.

From a community standpoint, this fire-and-forget method is cold and utilitarian.

This, however, is the final word. It may feel cold seeing them drop nothing but an ad link, but they don't owe us special attention just for using the same website as them.