Will Bowerman

Good luck!!! My team's entering the home stretch so I'm feelin some of that as well, though we have the benefit of linearity and isolated levels to help keep things contained. Polishing an open-ended world sounds really challenging!

Yeah, that's what I thought as well

I cannot find a source for this anywhere

are you a shiori hater...????

I provided that 1/15th as if it's helpful because for me, it *was* the key that I needed to find a real foothold in learning the language when it came to self-study. And now, 3 years later, I can confidently play video games in Japanese and understand what's being said a solid 99.9% of the time.

I get what you're saying but I made that post specifically because I successfully self-taught enough to feel comfortable with native material using tadoku as an on-ramp. If you want to *speak* Japanese then yes, tutor's helpful, but for reading/listening you need to mass input anyway

Keep up the pressure! #SaveSpeech

The Itch/Steam thing dropped off the trending tab.

Therefore it's time to remind you again to swamp the payment processors with more calls.

If the call volume dies down in under a week they aren't going to learn their lesson. Make them regret it.

as someone who answers phone calls for a living by the way my suggestion is don't just all do it at once, if you want to piss them off you need to not forget about it in 3 days. maybe set a reminder to call them in a week or something

i worked with our director RJ to put together a web page compiling phone numbers, emails, and petitions where you can make your voice heard - protect queer artists and sex workers and tell payment processing companies to end their awful policies harming safe spaces for creative art

Maybe we could find out.

Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372
Mastercard (Int.): +1-636-722-7111
Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911
Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440
PayPal: +44-0203-901-7000

Mastercard: Sex Work is Work. End Your Unjust Policy. Mastercard's new policy unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers more vulnerable, especially Black trans women. It must be stopped.

Let’s change gears. Do some good

Sign this. Make it go viral. Protect sex workers. End payment processor discrimination

action.aclu.org/petition/mas...

but their grade!! everyone knows that we go to school to get Good Grades and no other purpose

honestly though, thinking about it, I wonder if AI's intrusion into the classroom is largely due to an extreme emphasis placed on testing and metrics rather than genuine engagement with the material

randomly thinking about In Sound Mind and how goddamn good that video game is and how I'm kinda baffled it got sort of a lukewarm critical reception at release.

the mannequin thing alone is one of the cleverest little bits of game design I've ever seen in a horror game and that's like, level 1.

Yesterday I had to switch to my gremlin form due to performance issues and we all completely lost it

not sure rn ask me again when The Big Catch comes out because I will probably go completely feral over it

No, that feels good! Clean reinterpretation that still captures the general feel of the character. Antialiasing looks good and palette doesn't feel too busy imo, especially if this were to be used as a texture for a 3D model.

Blanksword is cool as hell - a game with an incredibly unique setting, great writing, strong core RPG mechanics, varied encounter design, a really fun spread of types of exploration, and a transparently massive amount of love put into it. Give it a peek!!

Blanksword's official Kickstarter key art, by Mortis Ghost.

Blanksword is going on ⚔️Kickstarter! ⚔️

Our campaign will launch later this year, and we're stoked to reveal that @mortisghost.bsky.social , OFF's creator, has made our official art!

Follow the campaign to get the latest news and help us gain momentum 👀
www.kickstarter.com/projects/283...

Yeah, imo it's a spectrum, but I don't really know where the "line" is; I know I find Vampire Survivor specifically some shade of offensive but I don't necessarily feel the same way about *every* game that shares a lot of its core design elements.

We've made sounds punchier and fx more sparkly, and some of the language of gambling has more explicitly found its way into paid games, but the desire for and aim toward an "addictive" experience has been present for a *long* time imo

I think I disagree with this? "Addictive" has been a term of praise for video games basically as long as I can remember, including on PC with games like Diablo, and in the early 2010s, during the indie boom of that era, with games like Binding of Isaac.

playing Spriggan - Lunar Verse, really into this guy that looks like Rad Thomas Jefferson

The unnamed, a bald, scrawny person with a censor bar over their eyes, is smoking a cigarette and having coffee outside. they're sweating, unwell from the heat. there's text next to them thzat states: "90° at 10 AM on a summer morning"

A screenshot of the game "An Outcry"'s steam page. It is 50% off.

An Outcry is 50% off in the Steam Summer Sale!
store.steampowered.com/app/1817470/...

you should give it a look if you haven't yet. >:)

We've been refining Kronii's moveset based on your feedback! 💪⏳

- It will be possible to dash indefinitely. Doing so puts her in a sprint!
- Haste will increase dashing speed instead of walking speed, which should make Haste movement easier.

We'll update the demo with our tweaks as well!

It's a shame, because when I'm able to enjoy fresh dialogue, the game is incredibly charming and does a great job of stirring that feeling of budding romance, but fresh dialogue becomes vanishingly uncommon the more you play. And like. I'm here to learn Japanese, so I dropped it. Ah well!

Worse still, it lacks enough content to make this significant difference in pace worthwhile - you'll repeat conversation and events with extreme frequency. Your date will always react to a given date spot with one of the exact same three lines, no matter where it is or how close you are.

Gameplay UI for Alluring Office - the date (April 11th) is in the top left, our location and time of day (home, morning) are in the top right, our key character stats are in the middle-left, and a text box describing our plan to go to the gym is at the bottom. All these elements are set against a background that appears to be a low-res photo of someone's bedroom.

But good *lord* it is slow-paced. Even while frequently making the game go as much as 5x normal speed, I *still* took 10 hours to get only halfway through the game - an amount of time it would take to complete a full run of Tokimemo 1 with absolutely no fast-forward required.

This one's a dating sim much in the vein of Tokimeki Memorial, but set against the background of an office workplace, and it has some good aspects! In particular, its cast is very charming, and I particularly enjoyed the interactions with Mana Kanzaki, with her very forward-yet-shy energy.

Cover of PS1 game Alluring Office. Two cartoon women in office wear are set around an office desk, with on one the phone and the other standing opposite them.

it's been a long time since I last posted about playing games in Japanese, but it's not because I stopped - it's because I keep failing to finish them for one reason or another, but! I figured I'd make a post about the most recent game I dropped: 誘惑オフィス恋愛課 (Alluring Office: Love Division).