June 18, 2025

On June 17, my pal learned I was a really big coward about horror games and wanted me to play something from Itch.io. I spent way too long being picky with what I wanted because I knew if it was too scary I would play it for 5 minutes and immediately leave. Suddenly, I saw a few rpgmaker horror games pop up. I've had experience with the Witch's House (which scared the shit out of me) so I figured I might choose one of these. From that list, I spotted Hello Charlotte. I already knew about the game from fanart on tumblr which I kept thinking was fanart of Marry Kozakura from Kagepro. All I knew about this game was gore, psychological horror, and eldritch gods, so I figured I would like it. I ended up playing all 3 main story games and the 2 spin offs within 2 days. On that note, Happy 10th anniversary to this game! Glad I managed to play its release day.

HC1 was a pretty simple game with a very confusing world. You are a puppeteer who controls a puppet named Charlotte. She lives in the House with all her friends! One day, her friend Felix goes missing and she jumps into a TV to save him. The TV has a lot of different worlds one can go through and none of them make sense. One of the worlds was very similar to the Witch's House and I was a whimpering whelp over a teddy bear chasing me. Luckily, There's only like 2 chase scenes in this entire series. Charlotte and Felix eventually reunite, find the world of a dead god, and Charlotte absorbs the dead god into her body. You know, normal activities. It's a very confusing game but a very interesting one nonetheless. The thing I really like about this series is how you can stop playing anywhere and it would still feel like a satisfying ending. I could've stopped playing at the first game and I would've been satisfied with the story of a dead god in the Persona 4 TV world. But theres more games to go through.

HC2 is a vastly different game from the first. Charlotte, after absorbing a dead god into herself, now has to go to school and pass her education while getting enough points so she doesn't get executed. Or something like that. You meet her girlfriend Anri who is kind of a bitch and a bullied boy named C who says he is the god of this world. Charlotte and C become good friends to the chagrin of everyone around them. This game is where the eldritch god theme really starts to kick in. Using the power of the god inside her. Charlotte can change the world to her whim, but only once. Honestly, this game is where the real meat and bones of Hello Charlotte begins, and despite having a much more clear story, it gets even more confusing with every passing second. The themes of depression, escapism, and overall shittiness of other people can be both so blantantly obvious and weirdly metaphorical everywhere you look.

HC3 is when everything begins to unravel. This is not the Charlotte you know. This is not the Anri you know. Is that still C? You, the puppeteer, have lost most of your control over this girl. Charlotte seems to have started a sort of cult where the undesireable people are executed live on television. You find yourself randomly transported to a story of a boy named Charles in a land unlike yet adjacent to the one you are familiar with. The way I feel about HC3 is the same on how I feel about Danganronpa V3. Its twist is so 4th wall shattering that it ruins everything you thought you knew about this game, yet manages to perfectly stay within the established themes of the story. It's a very personal story and one that I can't really type out everything I feel in one blog post. This is a game I feel like I'll be picking apart for years to come, and maybe one day I'll reach a point where this tale will truly resonate with me.

May 12, 2025

An incremental game I finished in 2 days. You are an adventurer who was given a map to this hole and you start exploring it for treasure and riches until you build up your own city from your profits.

It's the type of incremental game that requires a lot of active play. You look away for 10 minutes and suddenly you find yourself in the negatives in 4 different items because you were digging down too fast. Things are too fast to tab away from, but too slow to constantly be doing something. Alas, the infuriating addiction of incremental games.

There's a pretty interesting story. In the beginning, a lot of the plot is just in the background but it slowly gets closer and closer to you until it starts to actively affect your game. Even when delving into the hole, a lot of the information is just tidbits of mystery and cool writing of fantastical locations. In fact, many of the different layers of the hole are so interesting with a lot of imagine about. I might steal a few for my own DnD campaign.

My biggest issue with the game is the use of AI art, however. I just dealt with it until the end because I didn't spend money on the game and decided that if I'm not giving the creator any money, I'm fine enough with continuing to play it. However, I do subtly recommend that if you want to play it, maybe consider getting a download from somewhere a little less official. It's hard to notice the AI art in the cave layers, but it gets really obvious with the smaller images such as the projects and weaponry. The composition and lighting looks so much like AI art that it's hard to ignore. It's all covered up with a pixel art filter so no one notices it at first.

Nonetheless, an interesting story and world building but I would not spend money on this. I don't particularly think I would support the developer's other games either if they also use AI art.

July 18, 2024

Let's start this with the last game I finished uh.. last year

Honestly, this game fucking rocks. It's almost 20 years old and it still holds up pretty well. I've known about Ys for a while because I was looking through Yuzo Koshiro's wikipedia page and saw the game there. I thought it had a weird name, so it managed to stick in my head for a while. A lot of people said to start with this game and I think it's a great starting point.

It's a pretty simplistic action game about running up a tower and beating up demons. Just a run, jump, and slash with some magic abilities you unlock later on. There's also this dash attack that lowers an enemy's defense that's way too finicky to use consistently. You can play as 2 characters: Yunica, a little girl with a big axe, and Hugo, an angsty boy with ranged magic. There's also a secret third character that you unlock after beating the game once. Although, I think it would've been better to unlock him after beating the game with both main characters, but it's fine.

With 3 characters going through the same tower, the game does get really repetitive. Luckily, playthroughs are only around 10 hours and get even faster once you memorise the layouts. There are some changes between characters though. Aside from the obvious gameplay and story changes, they have a few different bosses between them and even different story beats. Some of them you get to see the same event at 3 different points in time. Overall, that doesn't really matter as the gameplay takes more of a focus than the story.

I haven't gotten around to playing the other Ys games, but this game is supposed to be the predecessor to all the lore in the series. Well, whatever lore consisently exists. So just the first two games. As this game is supposed to be a "myth" of some sort, the 3 POVs we get are just different retellings of this story. The true story obviously goes to the mysterious third character. I think it's a good way to add in all these different characters and plots and still make it canon. It also means that Yunica and Hugo were just lying for the sake of it lmao.

Overall, it's a fun game that made me put in 40 hours so far because I decided that 100% completing all the achievements was possible. It was not. Or at the very least trying to beat the game 3 times on nightmare difficulty is hell itself. And don't get me started on whatever the arena is. I still don't know how I'm supposed to beat those. I apologise to everyone on my steam friends list that had to see me reopen the game every 5 minutes just to restart a boss fight for an achievement.

Hmm. I’m in my Joker arc right now, and there are a lot of rich people here as if they are in a society or something. I do- I know I like making pranks and everything, but uh… rich people, I can’t tolerate. Let’s just say uh.. society treated me in a very bad way. That’s why I lash out with my funny pranks. Now, I ran out of uh pianos, so I’m gonna have to improvise here. Let’s see.. hm.. I could go for the usual cream pie, but I feel like those big, glass windows right in front of you might stop that. Man.. Coming up with good material on the spot is not easy. Man, if only that other person was here. The one with the- that got struck with the comically large anvil. I bet he’d give me some inspiration right about now. Yknow what, let me tell you a story while I’m here. My father- oh what the fuck?

Why are you stealing my spotlight? Get back to me! Elena, what are you even doing? Man whatever. Alright, back to my story- Why am I talking about Pluto right now? He doesn’t even know how to make pranks. I set up a twitch stream for him and everything and he just abandoned me. Honestly kinda rude of him. He said he was moving to Kik though, good luck with that I guess. Anyways.. uh.. where was I? Oh right

My father was uh.. was an alcoholic drunk and uh one day he came back a little extra angry and he told me “ I don’t know how I got these scars-“ wait no, I got these scars wait fuck. Back to square one, fuck. God, this Joker arc is not going well for me. Anyway uh.. fuck, where was I? Alright so my father came over and uh.. said why am I not smiling cuz yknow I’m the Joker, I’m supposed to smile. And then he picked up a knife and uh.. you- you know the rest. You saw Joker. You saw Batman, right? Yeah, you know how the rest goes.