Rivershard

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I compiled some Rust and Humus design changes from the upcoming book.

Left are the originals, right are the new versions. A few went through more than one iteration!

The Green Moon:

Uhia:

Rust Era:

The Time Child:

[cursedpie]

had to have happened at least once right?

[simandthedimbulbv2-0]

Trying my hand at some cursed sprites this time

the monster design of Look Outside is so fantastic, I wanted to give it a try heehee

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Delighted to have an excuse to do pixel art again! Thought I’d try my hand at some of the character transformation sequences, since they’re so meat, er, I mean neat. Also a Jeanne and some bonus lemon demons (because Audrey reminds me so much of Cabinet Man hehe.) The style is a little tricky to nail down but if nothing else, I enjoyed using the colour palette :)

[abberantmachine]

someone thinks green looks good on you

[cupofwater6]

finished look outside. u should play look outside. but don't look outside

[goblinsoasis]

Hey have you seen my daugh—

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Look Outside Posting part 10: A Dreadful Fate

Spoilers for the Spider and the Mask ending!

This is me trying to piece together all the clues that this thing drops into a cohesive whole.

I'll start by summing up what's explicitly given:

The Spider has come from "a realm so distant it doth defy mortal comprehension," through a "shadowed interstice". This is almost definitely the future, based on Spider's knowledge of future events - "a time and place [...] far beyond thy ken", "We hath met afore [...] in days far hence."

His goal is to observe Sam's past and come to understand him better, in order to be able to slay Sam's future self.

He predicts a terrible fate for Sam, in which Sam will be greatly changed, live on for all time, and inflict great suffering on the Spider and the entire rest of the world. It seems this is NOT inevitable in a temporal predetermination sense- Spider's mind can be changed if Sam seems strong enough to avert it. However, he considers preventing it so unlikely that that is no longer his goal.

The Spider claims to be the root cause of this ill fate.

He calls Sam his "brother" because: "we are knit together by a bond far beneath the flesh, and of a darkness no blood may match."

This is a lot to take in. At first, based on the "Thou shouldst have said no. Now, and in time to come." line, I thought the Truth ending was the one Spider predicts for Sam, but given his melodramatic lines when finding the four "strange offerings", I think the Mask Ending has got to be it.

Which is very weird! For a few reasons:

First, the Mask Ending is one of the ones I would least expect to see Sam as a monstrous threat in. Frankly, my assumption was that the paradoxical combination of Shadow-Sam and Human-Sam deleted the world and possibly the universe entirely. This connection alone might be the only existing hint at what happens to the world after that point.

Second, I accepted Truth as an "inevitable fate" because it aligns with what we know of Sam's motives. He's weirdly driven in that video game protagonist way, conquering the whole building in order to help some strangers out with a self-destructive long shot of a ritual. And he has some trouble with impulse control.

But the Mask Ending does not. Was there really no way to prevent Sam from tracking down four incredibly specific, dangerous, and hidden locations, and betraying his new astronomer friends for motives not much clearer than "I wonder what will happen"? Where did that stuff even come from anyway??

Here's what I'm thinking.

Sam's encounter with the Shadow on the roof is not, itself, the fate that the Spider predicts. It's the union of Sam and Shadow.

None of the endings other than Promise elicit any response from Spider because this fate has not been prevented. He attempts to render Sam brain-dead, saying that this will make his fate more bearable, not prevent it.

Spider has failed if Sam goes to the roof with the strange offerings and perpetuates the cycle of becoming the Shadow. But he has also failed if Sam dies, or if he succumbs to any other transformation.

The Shadow, now that it exists, exists across all time and in all realities. No lock nor key can hold it at bay. If it cannot recognize Sam, it'll leave for earlier in the timeline as easily as breathing, and maybe things will shake out differently that time.

The Spider, somehow and for some reason, accidentally gave rise to the circumstances that created Sam's Shadow. And in the end, it will take even his lifeless body into its arms.

The ONLY ending that truly prevents this from ever happening, as Spider knows, is Promise, the picture-perfect one, where Sam will never feel tempted to leave his life behind. Where he will remain content and bound by duty to Sybil and his friends until he dies a peaceful death.

~

That's my efforts for the moment. The sheer number of open questions raised here give me a strong suspicion it'll be referenced again at some point, perhaps in Malison.

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Look Outside Posting part 9

Spoilers for the Fungal Lair!

Y'know, I actually think Phillippe might have once been human too.

The other disguised fungus people all were human. Sylvain and Jean-Pierre are positively identified by more than one person as members of the custodial staff, and Claire looks like she has a body under all the fungus. (She also says "Humans are so stupid. I can't believe I used to be one.")

The reason Phillippe's personhood, specifically, was in question, was what he says in combat. "There was never a Phillippe."

"I don't even have a name! I'm a mushroom! This was all an act! Phillippe was never real!"

Physically, his true form is pretty similar to the other three. The only real delineation is what he says, and the fact that, instead of a human form, he's choosing to look like a whimsical moth that just barely passes scrutiny as a benign Cursed.

I don't think he was an actual moth, or some other animal, either. He has a French name fitting for the setting. He's familiar with idioms, and fairy tale tropes, and the concept of taxes, and heteronormativity. (And he thinks moths follow light because they like it.)

Recall what Claire says: humans are stupid. Jean-Pierre calls Sam a "pathetic little mortal". This demonstrates a certain attitude within the fungal circle.

I do believe the Spore Mother's best and most ruthless actor is simply embarrassed about what he used to be.

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My Sybil theory

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Look Outside posting part 8.5

Here are a few interesting tidbits from the combat files.

The furnace ticks are actually completely immune to cold damage, which might mean they're the source of the frost covering the Furnace. Not even the Pompom family is that cold-resistant.

Speaking of, Argot, the big tongue enemy in the freezer, is classified as "Frostbitten" for a reason. They don't look the part, but they have the same damage resistances as the others.

Most of the Freds inflict their associated emotional status effect when they hit you. Tumor Fred is no exception - he's able to share his Pain with you. If he actually hit you, that is.

"Corruption" damage is a type dealt by nightmares, and any other attacks that do spooky, eldritch, soul-withering things. Humans are weak to it, and the cursed vary in their susceptibility. The nightmares (duh), generic toothy mutants, rats, fungus, and the SWAT truck's tongues resist it, while Lyle, the onlookers, Panopticon, and Stargazer are weak to it. (Noticing any commonalities there?? 👀) And the entire tooth family, oddly enough, are completely immune to it. (In theory, you could safely hit Joel with the Hellsword! Edit: I have been informed that that's not the right kind of corruption damage. You could hit LEIGH, though.)

There's one damage type that's only referred to as "flesh" damage, that no enemy uses. There are exactly three sources of it: Tumor Fred's tumor grenades, the Hellsword, and Hellen taking her mask off, for some reason. Humans are weak to this too.

Leigh's two forms as an enemy are almost negligibly close in stats, perhaps suggesting that her giant monster form is less physical than it appears. The Grinning Beast is also one of the aforementioned toothy mutants - guys like Tumorhead, Eyecluster, Famine, or Fangipede, who don't really have a nifty theme to speak of. Stargazer's victims, like Spine, also fall under this category. These are all immune to flesh damage. Thus, Leigh is one of the only ones who Hellen could take her mask off in front of without any harm.

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Look Outside Posting Part 8: Madness

(Branching off of this earlier post)

Considering how benign the Visitor's motives are revealed to be, it's weird how dangerous its victims are. There are a lot of ways to break a psyche that don't make you try to kill people; by no means is that the default state of a human brain.

Most people, upon transforming, will go insane. What this looks like, exactly, varies. Panopticon is murderously protective of a staff-only room. Edwin's concept of normal human anatomy is altered, causing him to benevolently dismember people. Crawling Hand wants to like... squeeze you.

But the end result of all of these is still wanting to harm and kill people.

Judging by the disparate states of mind involved, it's not that that's just the kind of insanity everyone gets, either. The nature of being turned predisposes a person to aggressive behavior, as an effect alongside other mental symptoms.

(The actual reason is that they're enemies in a video game. Shh. Ssshhhh.)

The few firsthand accounts we get suggest that insanity is often brought on by all the new stimuli from a changing body overloading the brain. I personally have a theory adding onto this, that the primary cause of it is the growth of new brain matter connected to the existing brain.

This explains the unpredictability of the psychological effects, why the physical extent of transformation doesn't always correlate with sanity decline, the origin of the new aggressive impulses that the conscious mind tries to justify, and the lack of an adjustment period needed for Cursed to control their altered bodies. It also tracks with some unusual cases- Jeanne, Laurent, and possibly Rat Hole all had new brains form entirely separate from their existing ones, the predatory impulses of which were very clear.

That doesn't explain the reason for this behavior, though. Let's look at some theories:

Aggression helps Cursed spread/protect/feed themselves.

Cursed are tough to predict because they aren't natural creatures. They neither evolved nor were designed, and they certainly don't need help spreading.

As for it being useful, I'm not convinced of that. They universally fail to flee when heavily wounded, and it's not clear if they even fight amongst each other or technically need food at all. Their aggression is to the detriment of their own survival.

Aggressive Cursed are just easier to encounter/more likely to survive.

Hiding seems a lot more beneficial in the chaotic immediate aftermath of the Visitor's arrival, and Sam is going through (closed-off) houses pretty dang thoroughly. I'm sure there are a few that go unseen, but there's not enough room in the walls for all of them. There's also a distinct lack of Cursed corpses about.

Predation is the most elementary motivation for a complete mind to have, therefore the new brainlets develop it.

This makes some sense for something like an amoebic blob of goo that devours organic matter, but not so much for creatures that don't particularly seem to want to eat you. Their focus is on the killing part.

They also don't seem to be particularly unintelligent. The independent brains of the characters mentioned previously could speak and devise plans.

Aggression is innate to the Visitor's mind in a way that isn't obvious.

Recall from post 1 that the Cursed have been modified to act as extensions of the Visitor's body. Their tendencies might be reflecting a less conscious function of the Visitor's nervous system.

Thinking about what they actually do, very few of the dangerous monsters are going out and hunting people. They rove around a small area and attack if they notice someone enter it, and for the most part they don't pursue someone who leaves line of sight. The less is left of their human cognition, the closer they stick to this script.

It resembles guarding a territory, but they don't choose valuable places to defend, either. They just sort of evenly space themselves out wherever they happened to end up.

They also generally don't express negative emotions toward you, the intruder, to explain their aggression. They commonly simply feel positively about the pure act of killing, or don't seem to know what they're doing at all.

It makes me think of an immune response.

All living things have their own smaller intruders. Those that parasitize the Visitor could easily be just as complex, or more, than you are.

The Cursed are performing the important function of unseen, unknowable independent elements of the Visitor's physiology: to capture and destroy invaders.

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I did some tallying for every enemy, companion and NPC in Look Outside, in the interest of statistics.

Excluding all non-unique enemies, non-humans, and those being influenced by other Cursed (like the fungi or Rafta's polycule), there are 130 distinct Cursed in the apartment building.

I wanted to see what the prognosis might be for a given person who was turned. Here's a pie chart!

Safe are those whose sanity made it through apparently intact. They might defend themselves if attacked outright, but they show no signs of aggression. Examples: Fred, Hellen, the cafegoers, the sewer kids.

Those who fall under Conditionally Dangerous are often violent or at least unstable. They can, however, usually still be reasoned with or pacified somehow. Examples: Leigh, Jeanne (the heads), Steve, Taxidermy, the rats.

The Indiscriminately dangerous are those that attack on sight. They still typically have some sort of varying internal motivations to do so, but, at least from Sam's point of view, they cannot be held at bay except by killing them.

Zeroing in a little more, witnessing the Visitor yourself actually seems safer than we initially gave it credit.:

These are divided between those who witnessed the Visitor personally, and those who were infected by another Cursed. (I did have to make educated guesses about the origins about a lot of the enemies, and some were excluded for a lack of clues.)

It makes sense that being infected would be riskier, since that causes a similar mutation to the transmitter, and aggressive Cursed are more likely to attack and infect people.

[armknot-deactivated20251003]

the existence of the hellride or whatever its called makes me very confused. does hell exist in look outside? does heaven exist? was hell created when the hell ride looked at the visitor, or did it always exist? how did the hellride even look at the visitor??? its a car!!! what on earth.!!!! was it created when people in a carpool looked at the visitor?? then how would the car be transformed??

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It's time for some Look Outside posting. Are you ready?

I'll be analyzing the mechanics of the Visitor's effects a bit. Sam meets most everyone in the apartment building, and often gets firsthand accounts from them too, so we have a pretty good set of samples to draw from. Yay!

Part 1: The Why

First up is my personal theory for why being observed by the Visitor affects humans the way it does.

Here's what we know about it: (Spoilers, kind of.)

Being perceived by the Visitor causes humans to transform into unique monsters, on varying timescales. Its perception inherently changes things when it observes them, but humans and other animals are especially affected. What it does to them is "communicating... in a way".

Humans that transform tend to have a "theme" related to what they were near or what they were thinking about when contact occurred.

The Visitor only perceives living things when it, itself, is perceived by them in some manner. This is why looking at a photo or drawing of it will also cause a person to change.

The Visitor's interstellar size means that it takes time for the rest of its body to be aware of what each part is seeing.

The Visitor, prior to meeting Sam, had no concept of itself as distinct from other beings, as it has never met another living entity before, and it's used to independent things that it communicates with just being other portions of itself.

Now here's my thoughts:

When the Visitor looks at someone, it's assuming this is an unfamiliar piece of itself, and it forms a connection with them in the same way it would a neighboring chunk of its own nervous system that isn't physically connected closely enough for signals to travel all the way between them quickly.

The bond forged by the Visitor starting to perceive through someone puts their whole body in a volatile, changeable state due to having a steady portion of its attention.

When it does this, it can barely make sense of the human thoughts and concepts coming from the new "neuron". When a new one is especially salient to it, it reinforces the concept, trying to think about what that is - often through (what it thinks is) the node of itself that's picking up that idea. The human.

Think of it as rotating a cow in your mind, except to do this, you turn someone else into a cow. And then rotate them.

And of course, the human body isn't an alien monster neuron, so when it gets beamed with one of the person's own thoughts reflected from the confused Visitor, in its volatile state, it starts to distort.

The people whose new forms reflect a clear concept are products of this. Consider the case of Rana, who resembles a spider. In her story, she's an arachnophobe, and was worried about a spider she lost track of back in her house.

She's not a realistic spider, though - she's black, and hairy, and prominently fanged, with way more than eight glowing red eyes haphazardly arranged all over her head. She's an arachnophobe's idea of a frightening spider.

The monsters who sort of just resemble monsters more than any idea in particular, like Lokjaw, Stretchface, or the wacky creatures seen on the roof, could be products of more abstract thoughts, but they could also be the few that received an alien thought from the Visitor rather than having one of their own fed back to them, resulting in an unpredictable change.

When a witness goes back inside, and the Visitor can't back up the signals it's getting from them with its own perception of the area, its attention eventually wanes, and they're set aside in favor of other nodes whose feedback makes more sense to it, concluding the peak period of mutation.

Next time: a little on "contagious" transformations.

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Pages from the upcoming revamp of Rust and Humus

(artist link)

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Pages from the upcoming revamp of Rust and Humus

(artist link)