The Messenger - I plan to enroll in Sept. Please advise when to report for registration.

[KobaBeach]

Sea of Stars (yet to play the demo)

me but i get twice the kinkshaming for not playing the switch demo yet due to being the resident brain damaged rpg cumdump to the point that i literally want to play chinese and korean rpgs beyond genshin impact or ragnarok online private servers + i play wizardry with no savescumming and think SaGa is square-enix's best franchise

[Dragon Fogel]

It's very easy to get eaten by the whale monstrosity when it first spawns. Luckily, you got through the whole obstacle course in one shot. Dying anywhere in it sends you back to when you got the note, so it can be pretty annoying to mess up. Not too hard overall, fortunately.

And I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow's video.

[Dragon Fogel]

The final story really resonated with me. When I played through this game, I was recovering from some rough times, and the metaphor hit me hard. I think the part that got to me the most was that the boy was essentially told that it was up to him when to leave the well. At the time, I don't think I was quite out of my own well and it came across as very reassuring. I didn't have to stay in the well, but I didn't have to leave it before I was ready.

As for the music box itself, I really enjoyed it as an area. Movement in this game feels great, and this area tests all the movement tricks you've used throughout. The fact that the mechanisms are synced up to the music is a nice touch.

Phantom is a great fight, and while the ending is a bit silly, it's in character for the game.

Overall, I find this to be one of my favorite games, both to play myself and to watch others play. Personally, I didn't find the difficulty that high overall, and I'm not even someone who specializes in platformers; I think I just got into the flow of the game, something that also happened to me with both Guacamelee games. Although, it probably doesn't hurt that the platforming is very open and rarely expects you to do one specific sequence of moves.

[pholtos]

In today's episode, rao does the thing.

[EllenHouraisan]

Nobody wants me to get out of the well.

Gotta say, I'm glad that the game didn't go full-on wacky meta with its storyline. Other than the first conversation with the shopkeeper, the humor was a lot less agravating than I expected going in. It even got a chuckle from me here and there, so that's nice.

[S.N.N.]

yeah the messenger is easily one of my favorite games in the past few years. snappy controls, great level design, killer soundtrack. it was really fun watching raocow play through this, and doing additional playthroughs really drives home how speedrun-friendly it is - there are so many tricks you can do to bypass entire chunks of areas. for instance, you can skip into forlorn without the phobekins by doing some clever windmill shuriken throws above tbe first screen and then gliding to the right. you can also free manfred in glacial peak without even needing the queen of quills by just windmill shurikening the ice block holding him up and using your cloudstep to get over there.

looking forward to picnic panic. a couple of old friends will return too.

[raocow]

of course to get the windmill you need the green coins that are found in the areas you would be accessing using the windmill. so interesting ng+ shortcuts though, definitely

[Dragon Fogel]

You can't have the new guest go to the end because there is no end. You can, however, send them a billion rooms in so there are a billion people who don't have to move.

A better question is, why do they have a term "finite" to turn into "inn-finity" if the term "infinity" doesn't already exist?

[thatguyif]

So, the story of The Messenger DLC's development kind of ties into the story of Sea of Stars' development.

Some backstory first, based on what I've read: When Thierry Boulanger created Sabotage with Phillipe Dionne et al, Sea of Stars (back then known as Project Solstice) was his dream project (a pun related to Chrono Trigger's development may (not) be in there). But Mr. Boulanger, showing some business acumen, recognized that pitching a 16-bit-style narrative RPG is a lot harder to do than a 2D action game with neat twists, especially when you had no game development experience to showcase. So Sabotage developed The Messenger first, getting the support of both Devolver and the Canada Media Fund/Fonds des médias du Canada (the latter of which also helped fund Dead by Daylight and We Happy Few).

After the success of The Messenger, Sabotage began work (as one does these days) on DLC. Picnic Panic was meant to be the first of three DLCs, but the only one published. I will not explain the story of the DLCs until the very end of Picnic Panic. What I will say though is what happened to the other two: Project Solstice happened. I don't know the exact specifics, but I suspect that Sabotage recognized that since they now had the mettle and credibility to pitch themselves to the world at the same level as, well, Yacht Club Games, they decided to redirect their focus entirely to Project Solstice. Eventually, in February 2020, they had enough ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign, the game now called Sea of Stars, on a ~US$100,000 goal. By the end of the campaign, they not only had more than ten times that, but Yasunori Mitsuda reached out to them personally to compose tracks for the soundtrack. You could see where their priorities lay henceforth.

Will we ever see the other two DLC? I dunno. I have my doubts. But hey, if John Romero could still make classic DOOM levels, maybe they'll see the light of day...

[raocow]

ah man. though I mean I'm glad they got a good success but still

[Lord Ruby]

Well, that was a very bold plan, given how well most indie games do. I'm glad it worked out, though, since Sea of Stars looks really nice.

I also feel like that story explains some of the writing decisions in this game...

[EllenHouraisan]

I guess there's always the chance one of the devs will pull a Florian Himsl and make DLC for the old game when they're bored.

[thatguyif]

It's worth saying that, based on logs from their Discord, the team had a very clear vision of what the other two DLC would be about, and the first DLC sort of sets up the remaining two. So it's not like they were running out of steam. It's certainly possible that they could return to it after Sea of Stars is complete.

[Catabo]

lil smile.png (4.06 KiB) Viewed 84 times

c:

Text on signs above shops says "tuwhera" which apparently means "open" in Māori. Getting Bonkles vibes from the little guys with masks+Māori words combo.

I can't speak for how easy it would be to navigate the environs, but the healing cove would make for a great secret clubhouse. Maybe it's the meeting spot for the hooligan voodkins who spit at you with blowguns.

[Dragon Fogel]

This boss fight gave me a lot of trouble. Good work getting through it in one try, I guess being aggressive with those windmill shuriken helped.

[EllenHouraisan]

I didn't know there were more golden egg-laying geese other than the one the giant in the clouds had.

Gotta say, I'm enjoying the vibe of this DLC a lot more than the main game. The laid-back nature of it fits super well with the general tone of the game.

[kitikami]

The infinite hotel story is from a famous thought experiment about countably infinite quantities.

This game kind of reminds me of a Back to the Future NES game i played as a kid where you have to go back and forth between timelines looking for random items (it even has a gimmick where you can plant trees in the past so they grow in the future), except this is many orders of magnitude better.