DDLC, Sanrio Danshi, Passing Notes, etc.

Skipped FNW this past week and we finished playing through Doki Doki Literature Club instead.  It was indeed creepy at parts and had some jump-scare-ISH moments, but (lucky for us?) it was wayyyyyy tamer than I had imagined.  For me personally, 90% of the horror came from those times when I was only half-conscious and drifting in and out of sleep while also thinking about the game...basically my imagination was way more frightening than what was actually there.

So, there's that.  They definitely could have pushed that element a LOT more if they had wanted to, but having played the game I don't actually think that is really what they were trying to achieve at all (even though it is the most infamous aspect of it).  It was more of trying to explore the VN genre a bit and provide some deeper "what-if"s, I think.  There is quite a bit of breaking the 4th wall a-la OneShot, albeit with a different sort of flavor.  There are a good number of easter eggs and little tricks along those lines as well, which I enjoyed.

Overall I found it pretty interesting...there was definitely a lot of suspense and anticipation, haha.  There were a few parts that were definitely falling into the "mediocre VN" territory, though I think those were more intentional than not.  So yeah, overall pretty interesting.

I watched the third episode of Sanrio Danshi and...unfortunately I was right -- they resolved the issue at the end of the episode and are moving on to other things now.  So now we all know what to expect from now on; it's just going to be a "topic-of-the-week" sort of deal, and pretty light-hearted.  Which is a bit of a shame to be honest, since some of these issues are pretty important and deserve a better treatment.  But eh, some light fluff is okay too.

On Friday I went to an interesting event called "Passing Notes" that I heard about from Aivi & Surasshu, who were going to be showing up as the guests.  It was a small music producer gathering where we met up to make music for two hours and share...basically an in-person compo of sorts.  It actually ended up being a ton of fun -- I haven't compo'd in quite a long time and it was a real rush getting in the zone and just letting the music flow out again.

Instead of a theme, we were provided with some different piano riffs that Aivi herself had recorded beforehand to base our tracks off of.  I've never really made a track built around sampling something else before in this way, so it was really fun to give that a whirl!

It was also just really fun meeting up with other producers in person, as that's not really something I've had the opportunity to do.  It definitely had the same vibe as OHC did, only a little cozier since we were all actually there at the same place.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to release that track in the near future, so stay tuned for that!

Went back to Mission City Swing on Wednesday, which was kinda fun...obviously my WCS is really rusty, but it was nice to do some again.  It's really interesting -- I feel like I could sense through my dancing that I have loosened up a little, not just as a dancer, but as a person.  It's...an odd feeling, to have that change shown to you so readily.  I don't really know how to feel about it.

Been working my way through Tyrian2000...I'm on the last episode and have gotten to a super-difficult Gyges level.  All of these later episodes are actually brand new to me, as I've never played them before, but to be perfectly honest, it doesn't really feel like I was missing out on all that much, haha.  You can assemble a max DPS combination around halfway or maybe a little bit further through the game (laser, rear mega pulse, zica supercharger, and battleship class firebomb), so past that it's just a bunch of flying around and blowing up a whole bunch of stuff.  Still, Tyrian really is a classic, and it's one of those games that just has a seemingly endless amount of content...there's arcade mode in addition to the normal full game, there's local co-op, there's a collection of secret ships to play through, there's minigames, and even a realtime scorched earth-type game called Destruct.

Samurai Shaver is finally out for iOS and Android and I can breathe a little easier knowing that I'm all done with that project.  It felt really nice last night especially, just going to bed and not feeling like I'm scrambling to be on top of everything.  Of course, there's still always more stuff to work on...currently my missions are to finish up the song from Passing Notes, and then to get started on the work for my Journey cosplay, but before that I think I can afford to take a bit of a breather and just treat myself nicely.