hi! figured I'd do an intro post to pin just because why not. I'm sleepyfikou, or ryn, and I'm a big fan of bionicle, star wars, and video games (especially platformers). I love speedrunning, and have done speedruns of a ton of different bionicle games as well as other games. I'm also learning game development and have released a few games.
I mostly just use this blog to reblog bionicle fanfic, MOCs, and fanart, but I also occasionally post game development updates or random bionicle stuff. I love talking bonkle, so feel free to reach out to talk about characters/lore, share your mocs/OCs, or recommend fics (or share your own!)
Links
I don't use much social media besides tumblr, but here's what I have:
itch - this is where you can see and play the games I've made! be warned, they're mostly designed for experienced platformer players and are a bit tough.
Twitch - I stream speedruns and random platformers here, usually a couple times per week, sometimes more if I'm in the mood.
Youtube - this is the channel where I post my speedruns. I also have another channel I use to post walkthroughs of my own games, which you can find linked on my itch page.
I also have discord but I don't share that publicly. if you want to contact me, send me a message on tumblr and I can send you my discord once we've gotten to know each other a bit!
when I was setting up a dictionary for the contents of a room i accidentally named the array for loot "foot" and when I looked at it again a couple days later i spent like 10 minutes trying to figure out why i had defined a random array called "foot" before i figured out what it was suppose to be
my interest in bionicle has been resparked lately, but I have no idea how to participate in the fandom. no artistic/writing skills, and got scared away from MOCing by seeing how often people "hate-share" and make fun of other peoples MOCs. i'm working on a fangame but it won't be ready for awhile, and I've done a lot of bionicle game speedruns, but the speedrunning community is a very niche segment of an already niche fandom. don't really know where people congregate/discuss bionicle besides here and how to join in/participate ;-;
Pathetic little fool. Is THAT all you aspire to become? You would be content with the most meager alterations to your weak corporeal flesh?
Your idea of commanding the respect of others is... for them to use your name? and pronouns? And be treated as...
..an Equal?
Not to strike terror and anguish into the hearts of your enemies? Not to subjugate the weak? Not to bring empires to their knees? Not to inflict untold pain and suffering across the cosmos?
You sicken me. As always, you lesser beings lack vision. You require only a small, insipid body for a small and insipid mind.
Of course your kind could never conceive of being anything more than what you are, that you would transition that miserable, shambling sack of organic material you call a body into something equally dull and unimaginative. You transition, but you never transcend.
Now, were you to comprehend the scope and machinations of my, as you would call it, "transition goals," your feeble mind would surely-
Once you, as a Bionicle fan, make the decision to view Greg quotes as potentially helpful suggestions rather than strict canon, many doors open to you, such as becoming able to ignore those quotes when they contradict each other or the text itself, or reading the BS01 page for the Mask of Clairvoyance as a form of self-harm.
i've been brainstorming bionicle fangame ideas in my head for years and never found one that I felt I could actually execute because they were either too high scope, or too niche to the point where nobody would be interested in it except me. but now I've finally got one I think will work. still slightly niche, but i think at least a small amount of people will really vibe with it, and the scope is reasonable. i've already started work on the core gameplay loop and it feels doable. won't be ready to show for 8/10 this year but maybe next year.
And here's the previous version again for reference/comparison:
I wanted to keep a lot of the design elements I still liked, but make her smaller, more lightweight, more refined, more efficient.
And I think I pulled that off! :D
Sadly(?) I had to ditch the complex gear mechanism of her prosthetic arm, but I'm really glad I was able to keep the shock absorbers in her lower legs.
And while still being more complex than one, she scales way better with Inika builds.
There are a few pieces I'll definitely need to bricklink before I can build her properly, but for the most part I already have everything I need as soon as I disassemble the old model, which is nice. Plus, being more lightweight, she'll probably be much better with posing, so I can properly show off Lariska at her acrobatic best.
as probably the only person who has ever learned to speedrun every retail bionicle game (+ TLoMN and Masks of Power Legacy) I felt like doing something that probably nobody in the world cares about and give a review of all of them from a speedrunner's perspective.
note that my general opinions of them as games will probably vary a lot from what is said here. for example, matoran adventures is a pretty terrible game, but one of my favorites to speedrun. i'm just focusing on the latter in this post.
we'll go in release order. i'll link to one of my runs for each game so you can watch and see what it looks like in case you're curious. also i'll stop typing in Casual No Capital Letters Speak so it's easier to read.
LEGO Bionicle (aka Quest for the Toa, aka Tales of the Tohunga)
Extremely cool from a technical sense, but not really that fun in terms of actually executing the run. This is one of the buggiest Bionicle games and so there are a ton of crazy exploits and glitches that you can use to get a faster time, but the game is generally just slow-paced and not very exciting to play or watch. It's also quite short, which can be a good thing, but I think in this game it isn't. It just makes it feel like there isn't much to the run. 6/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui (beta version)
Easily my favorite speedrun of the 3D games. Fast-paced and very focused on movement optimization, one of my favorite aspects of speedrunning. Unfortunately it does get dropped a bit due to its tendency to crash and having some really annoying skips. But in general, I quite enjoy playing it, and I may come back and give it another go some day. 8/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Matoran Adventures
My favorite Bionicle speedrun. Short, but extremely dense. Almost no randomness or bottleneck skips. Lots of optimization potential. Very fun to execute. The only downside is that it is extremely difficult to learn, as there is a lot of memorization involved due to the claustrophobic camera. But this is definitely the game I had the most fun speedrunning. 9/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: The Game (Console version)
Decently fun to run, but has a lot of problems. The any% is absolutely horrible and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and would recommend NTS instead (same as any% except you don't do the godawful skip in the first level). While the game is fairly fun to execute, the pace is slow, which is only made worse by the fact that nearly half of the run is spent watching cutscenes. There are also some run-killing RNG segments, segments that are nearly autoscrollers with no optimization potential, and an incredibly frustrating RNG final boss. 5/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: The Game (GBA version)
If I was a better player, I would rate this game a lot higher, potentially one of the highest on this list. It has pretty much everything I like in speedruns; fast-paced, high movement optimization potential, a low amount of run-killing bottlenecks (kind of. i'll get to it), relatively few glitches and skips, and the skips that do exist mostly skip stuff that isn't very fun anyways.
The problem? The game is just too ridiculously hard. I said there aren't a lot of run-killing bottlenecks, but that's because basically the entire game is a run-killing bottleneck. There are so many areas of the game where a single tiny mistake will cost you a life. Since so many lives are used for deathwarping, this means only 2 or 3 extra deaths can cause a game over, ending a run instantly. The game is also around an hour long, not the worst length for a speedrun, but a really long time to have to execute everything flawlessly.
And boy, the learning curve in this game. I was lucky to have lots of experience playing isometric games, but due to this games controls, even just learning to move your character fluently is something that is going to take most players many hours. It's brutal. A wonderful speedrunning game in theory, but absolutely brutal to actually play. 6/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Maze of Shadows
Probably the most unique run on this list. Takes an extremely long time to learn the route and how to adapt to all the different scenarios that RNG can bring. Also has a surprisingly high execution ceiling with the menuing, toa-swapping, and puzzle execution. However, the pace is dreadfully slow, and the run is over 2 and a half hours long (over 3 when you're first starting to get the hang of it). It makes it a bit of a slog. Another game that is more fun in theory than in practice. 6/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Heroes (PC/Console version)
A great speedrun brought down by a few things. First of all, this 3 hour run is clogged full of boring downtime. The game is loaded with cutscenes and horrible bosses where all you do is stand around waiting for them to drop their shield. Second, there are some pretty annoying skips. Third, some of the RNG can cause huge timeloss with no real counterplay.
But aside from those things, the game is actually an incredibly fun run with fast-paced combat that requires practice and skill to optimize. It's a very satisfying game to improve in. I actually think this is an example of a game that is greatly improved by speedrunning. When I played it casually, I found it pretty boring, but playing it with the goal of optimization made it much more exciting and engaging. 7/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Heroes (DS version)
Pretty fun game that is primarily focused on combat optimization, similar to the console/PC version, and lacks many of the problems that game had; there are no cutscenes, the bosses are shorter and more involved, there is less RNG. The only reason why I wouldn't consider this run an objective improvement on the main version is simply because the combat isn't half as interesting. There is really only one viable weapon, and the encounters are extremely straightforward. Because of this, it often ends up feeling like just as much of a slog as the PC/console version despite being less than half the length. 7/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Heroes (GBA version)
Easily the most boring and repetitive run on this list. Half of your time playing the game will be spent sitting in front of enemy spawners spamming the fire button. There's almost nothing to even talk about with this game. There are no cutscenes, but most of the gameplay is as boring as a cutscene. 4/10 (Link to run)
Bionicle: Masks of Power Legacy
Honestly a pretty fun run, even if it is just running around from point A to point B. It's a movement optimization game through and through, more like a platformer than the open world RPG it's supposed to be. The only flaw is that the game is very unstable, and it's really easy to accidentally crash or softlock the game. Once you learn to avoid those, though, it's a fun run. 7/10 (Link to run)
well, that's it! that was fun to get off my chest. maybe I'll come back to speedrunning bionicle games. writing about them made me want to give it a go again. we'll see. thanks for bothering to read this thing!
"expressive movement" this. "acrobatic moveset" that. i want expressionless movement. sauceless movement. run and jump. double jump if you're lucky. walljump and dash really pushing it.
