Nina_Birb

I really hate the "Don't make a (insert genre) game, they don't sell" advice. I can't be the only one who thinks that's really bad game dev advice.

Sorry for my bad English, it's my worst language and also my only language.

Customer pointing at lesbian girl eating: I'll have what she's having Waiter: Understood

Lesbians

Nina: Who are you? Stranger: I was you... or you were me, or we used to be each other, long before you knew yourself as Nina

Nina: Are you... still a part of me? Stranger: I was briefly when you finally came out... But as time went on I slowly disappeared. Right now, I've been long dead. Nina: Do you miss being me? Stranger: No

Stranger: I was pessimistic, I was edgy, I wanted people to feel as much hurt as I felt. Stranger: I was mad that I couldn't fit myself. Turns out I never belonged here. I'm just a stranger. Nina: Is there anything I can do for you?

Stranger: You've already helped. Just let me stay dead, I was never going to make you happy Stranger: I'm so proud of who you became. Don't ever ruin that by bringing me back. Nina: Okay... I won't. I promise

Something personal to me

The Stranger

I love everything about video games, it's an infinite medium that has so many ways of expression that all have intentionality behind each part of their design. I love seeing al the ways a games mechanics, art, and story work together. I love analyzing all the details ofa game and how they create a bigger whole. I love seeing the ways people interact with them.

So with that being said, I fucking hate the "AI generated games are the future" bullshit. There's no intentionality, there's no reason for design choices other than it looks like it would be in a game. There's no innovation because all it can do is steal. There's nothing to analyze because AI games are just noise that's randomly arranged to look like a game. It goes against everything I love about video games.

This doesn't even come close to fully expressing my burning hatred for AI generated games.

I'm done with Nintendo, I'll never play another Nintendo game.

Nintendo: New Tomodachi Life Game! Now with more customization! Nina: You can't just win me over with my favorite childhood game.

Nintendo: There's gay now. Nina: Damnit

Nina: Why can't April 16th come sooner? The Hypocrite Replaying Tomodachi Life as she waits for the sequel.

I hate them but they make games I enjoy. Toxic Yuri

When I get my hands on the new Tomodachi Life game there will be so many lesbians on my island.

I'm currently sick ;^;

it's my 3 year trannsiversary, yay

I'm not a good judge of what games are popular. I find and play a game and think everyone has heard of it, but then whenever I bring it up in conversation, nobody knows it, and when I look it up there's only a handful of letsplays of the game.

Windswept is a 2D platformer inspired by Donkey Kong Country. You play as Marbles and Checkers, a duck and turtle duo both with their own unique moveset. This game is not for casual players, you will die a lot, and there aren't a lot of checkpoints. The base game is retro 80's levels of difficulty, while optional content is Celeste B side levels of difficult, requiring the player to master the full moveset of both characters. I personally loved this level of difficulty, but if this isn't your thing the accessibility options are great, like spawing checkpoints or invincibility. I highly recommend this game as someone who likes difficult platformers.

moonleap is a short puzzle platformer where jumping swaps the state of level objects. Grassy platforms swap between safe and spiky, enemy behavior swaps, etc. The goal of each level is to collect every flower. The game is short, having only around 64 levels, but there are optional goals like least swaps or optional collectibles, and hidden bonus levels. I highly recommend this game for anyone who wants a short but fun puzzle game.

Corgispace is a collection of 13 small thinky games. The concepts are simple but original, like a sokoban about being able to destroy terrain by merging gems, a dinosaur sorting game where you need to satisfy certain conditions, a reflex gem sorting game, etc. All the games are unique and fun. I highly recommend this for fellow puzzle heads.

Yooka-Replaylee is a remaster of Yooka-Laylee, and I say far exceeds it. It fixes a lot of flaws of the original, like making the roll move no longer take stamina, having levels fully unlocked from the beginning, the player moveset now being fully unlocked from the start, and removing a lot of annoying sections. Also new content added, with more collectibles than the original, and levels are tweaked to be more fun than the original. I actually found myself wanting to play more after beating the game.

Some more reviews.

Games Mentioned: Windswept, moonleap, Corgispace, Yooka-Replaylee

The Loners Head: A strange energy keeps the mind alive (Image depicts a titan head laying in the center of a forest)

The Projected Hollows: A world builds itself inside, mental projections of a long dead being

Spectruls: Mental ghosts turned flesh, ranging complex to simple

Danger Spectruls: Hostile memories, connected to strong emotions.

Made some rough concept sketches of an idea I had for a world building thing. If this does become of thing, these images are likely not going to be canon.

Nintendo was a gateway drug to indie games.

controversial opinion. video games are pretty cool.

This game is kicking my ass, I'm not sure if this is for me.

Okay, I'll quit this game if I can't beat this lobster

20 Minutes Later (Yummy lobster :3 )

Been trying Elden Ring (Mild Blood Warning)

After 5 days, I finally fixed the bug with ladders.

(Ladder glitches intensify)

(Multiple Errors)

Oh...

Pain

Dev: "Oh, looks like this cube bounces slightly when we place it on the ladder. It's probably fine, none of our puzzles are really affected by it.

Player: "I made 100 puzzles about cubes bouncing slightly on ladders in the level editor"

Every time there's a small quirk in the mechanics for a puzzle game this happens.

A YEAR OF SPRINGS is a 3 part visual novel about a group of three girls, with lots on different LGBTQ+ topics. Since this is a short story, I won't spoil it. However, I did want to make this review special, because this game became special to me from start to finish.

As a trans women, finding representation in media is rare. So to find a game that has a trans woman as one of the main characters, and for us to actually see her struggles that come with being trans, for the first time in a long time, I felt seen. I couldn't help but cry seeing things I always thought I could never find the words for be so easily verbalized, seeing myself so much in a character, having a game basically tell me over and over "I understand".

This is the kind of representation I want. Even if this representation is few, I cherish them every time I find it. The kind where being trans isn't just a one and done thing that's brought up and then never again, but the kind where it bleeds into multiple parts of the characters life, from social to personal to legal. Showing how unfair things are now, but hopeful of how things could be.

Thank you for reading a sappy trans woman describe how much she loved a visual novel. I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants more stories about trans women, plus some extra representation I won't spoil. It only took me 2 hours to beat, and I have never felt more seen from any other media. I hope to someday live in a world where this kind of representation becomes the norm.

Game review? Ramble? Yeah ramble.

A YEAR OF SPRINGS

Thinking with ADHD is like a constant game of word association.

Nina's Steam Replay 2,416 Sessions 148 New Games 202 Games Played 1,100 Achievements

I really like video games :3

Sometimes when I'm making a puzzle game, I find an interaction that's useless as a solution. When I was making Transition, there was an interaction where a non-green player could have their reset point blocked by a green object. While this was interesting, it ultimately would delete the player, leaving the level unbeatable.

I still wanted this interaction in the game, so ultimately I realized the problem with the interaction is that deleting the player is useless. So I added a respawn clone, an inactive clone that becomes the player when the original player is deleted. This fixed the issue of the previous interaction, as now the player could respawn once, and let me create a simple puzzle with it.

This one mechanic lead to several new puzzles that I hadn't planned for. Puzzles requiring the player to find ways to delete themself, puzzles requiring changing the players reset point, puzzles about trying to get to another room as a non-green player, the list goes on. Suddenly this game that I was planning on abandoning due to a lack of interesting puzzles now had loads of new puzzles because of a mechanic purely meant to fix one problem.

I learned something important from that moment in making Transition. If there is a cool interaction that doesn't have any use as a solution, don't leave it out of the game. Adding a new mechanic to make the interaction useful allows for the interaction to stay, and allows for even more puzzles.

Something I learned from making puzzle games

Recently I've started doing a thing where if I have something I want to say, I'll do it as a comic. I'm not good at completely vocalizing my thoughts, but am good at it when I can attach those thoughts to a drawing. Turning jokes into comics and shortening rants into 4 panels.

Angeline Era is a 3D action adventure game with a cool twist on the formula. Rather than just selecting a level, every level on the overworld is invisible, and you must search suspiscious tiles in order to find them. This makes finding levels its own treat, rewarding players for paying attention to map design. The levels themselves also hold up nicely, fun combat, tons of level variety, and packed full of secrets. Once again, the two talented devs of Analgesic Productions knock it out of the park.

Wandersong is a 2D puzzle platformer story game where you play as a pacifist bard trying to save the world. Singing will be the players main way of interacting with the world. The singing mechanic is used in puzzles, choosing dialogue, gameplay changes, even story. The story itself is charming and deeper than it looked. The characters are just as charming and deep, I loved watching them grow as the story went on.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a Zelda-like puzzle adventure game where you can color the world. This game was surprisingly theraputic, I found myself stopping from time to time just to draw something on a screen for a few minutes. The story is also incredibly deep and well written, tackling mental health issues and tying it back into gameplay. The game is extremely charming, full of fun little side quests, good level design, amazing bosses, and well written characters.

Meg's Monster is a medium story RPG where you play as a strong monster trying to bring a girl back home. Instead of needing to worry about your own health, you need to worry about the girl's emotional health. The more damage the player takes, the sadder the girl gets. The game is not perfect, I have many problems with the plot, but the characters are what kept me going, and made me break down crying near the end. A cautious recommendation only if characters can keep you from dropping a game with a flawed story.

Time for a few more recommendations.

Games mentioned: Angeline Era, Wandersong, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Meg's Monster

Here at the game awards we care about developers when it's necessary, which is why out next guest will be another celebrity

Hello, I'm a celebrity who will use buzzwords to say the same thing every other celebrity has said to make it seem like I'm passionate about video games

And here are the winners for the categories we will skim through and hand the awards to off camera because our ad time means so much to us. You sure did it award. . The game that will lose to cause drama . The game that will win to cause drama . It doesn't matter who wins or loses . The end result is always drama . We love putting objective value to games

And now here's 20 ads after giving out one award on camera

I don't like the game awards

OOOH, this game looks so cool, I'm definitely adding it to my wishlist!

(Game sign says "AI used") Why would you do that? Why must you hurt me?

This is the worst thing to happen with a game that looks promising.

I'm playing Angeline Era, and it's fascinating how a simple interaction can be made so rewarding by hiding the fact you can interact with it. Finding levels is so fun because they aren't visible on the map. You need to hold down a button in a spot where you think there's a level. They're all secrets

1000XRESIST is a story heavy game taht is extremely well written. Without any spoilers, the game treads a fine tightrope of keeping the player in the dark of what's truly going on without it being overly opaque, giving breadcrumbs of understanding until by the end the player is completely filled in. The game also masterfully uses dialogue, constantly but subtly foreshadowing later plot points in non-obvious ways.

Creaks is a medium length story puzzle game about avoiding different types of monsters and turning them into furniture under light. It's a fairly simple but interesting puzzle game with some tricky puzzles. It's not too long, it took me only 3 hours to beat, but it's still worth your time if you want a medium difficulty puzzle game.

Gentoo Rescue is an ice sliding puzzle game where you slide different colored penguins to goals. While it sounds like any other ice sliding puzzle game, that couldn't be further from the truth. There are so many mechanics like items penguins can pick up, different enviromental mechanics, walruses that have their own win conditions, even meta puzzles. The complexity of this game is surprising, and it desereves a lot more attention.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a puzzle detective game where you play as a ghost that can possess and manipulate objects. You'll be using your powers to prevent deaths 4 minutes before they happen, and solve the big mystery of who you were before you died. The game has a lot of fun puzzles, charming characters, and a good mystery, which makes sense as it's by the same people behind Ace Attorney.

It's been a while since I recommended some games

Games Mentioned: 1000XRESIST, Creaks, Gentoo Rescue, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

it's always really cool when something I like or a creator I follow gets popular. Cause like now this small creator or thing is getting the love and attention they deserve, and it's really cool to see. Also, a little guilty pride of liking something before it becomes popular.

2-panel comic about two guys lamenting about modern games whilst refusing to acknowledge indie games

Left to Right: Nina is You (Baba is You), Celeste, In Stars and Time, Noita

Why did no one tell me I could change the art for the games in my steam library?