#mytona

[v2nnnt]

wanna share some of my cooking diary fanarts!!

some old magma drawings

sketch of my avatar w other characters :)

maybe some more creighton styles here too. these r also pretty old (u can very much tell from the style change)

i have a handful more, but i might only keep it to myself... that's all for now! big hearts to andy and creighton ❤️

[arsene-fixates]

sneak peek for the next location :-]

[theniftycat]

So, there's this newest, freshest scandal in Yakutsk. Fntastic, the company that recently released The Day Before, the most wish-listed game on Steam, declared that they're stopping their operation.

Fntastic is a game developer company created and based in Yakutsk. A couple of years ago they were backed by Mytona, a mobile game dev company that was also established here.

In 2022, Mytona almost completely left Yakutsk, along with InDrive, they did it in order to keep being able to work internationally and not depend on Russian politics. That made Fntastic the biggest and best known software developer in Yakutsk. I even considered joining them after being let go from Mytona, but I knew better. Mytona laid off hundreds of people in the past 18 months, I'm sure some of them got to Fntastic.

One of my cousins worked at Fntastic about three years ago. He was making video game levels. He worked for 12 hours a day without being compensated for his extra hours, he said his bosses (the Gotovtsev brothers) would randomly ask him to redo everything just based on the vibes. He was paid enough money by local standards, but nowhere near what a triple A dev should get (about $800/mo).

He burnt out and left. It was his first job in game dev.

As far as I understood, they barely had managers because the Gotovtsevs were controlling everything. I know that just maintaining a mobile game needs a ton of management, discussions, feedback, approvals etc. They had none of that.

The Day Before is built from newly purchased assets and has very little gameplay. It seems like the production process never changed, they kept remaking the game from scratch, only knowing that it should be whatever the latest definition of "cool" is.

Mytona is their publisher and they've already lost a lot of money, first by developing too many new projects at the same time and then none of them making it, then by having to move the entire business abroad, and now by backing Fntastic.

I think I'd call the Gotovtsevs scammers. They lied to everyone, including themselves.

The video below explains how suspicious it was from the very start.

[theartofmany]

Artist: Michael Black Title: Juno “Hello! I am happy to share part of my upcoming project. This will be a series of science-fiction illustrations about the international space program for the development of the icy ocean of Europe - the sixth moon of Jupiter Here are a couple of characters and some sketches of the future project. This work was started as my submissin for "Researchers. Point of no return" contest https://render.ru/ru/contest/16514/about Contest organized by RENDR.RU and MYTONA” It even shows you the selfie (third drawing) Outstanding...

[simulantion]

Finally have enough money to buy the most expensive outfit in Summer Shop and still have 13 days left :D

Game: Cooking Diary

[arsene-fixates]

The whole gang :-]

[arsene-fixates]

Ravenhill is what Seekers Notes was meant to be

I'm going to touch heavily on both games here on appearances, meaning the atmosphere of both games and how they have differed will be mainly talking about Seekers Notes and i will tie it to Ravenhill.

If you've played both games, you'd know that both games hold about the same premise: You are dubbed the seeker in a cursed city and you are fated to save the city solving mysteries and the like

Their differences are rather subtle in the lore, but it generally follows the idea that you help the townspeople find things and uncover the missing people in the city

Seekers Notes was launched first in 2015, and Ravenhill 3 years later in 2018. It was then taken down in 2020 i don't exactly know why but my friend had told me that the game wasn't doing well money wise.

Ravenhill was then rereleased last year 2024, and it kept the old UI that it had before it was taken down and i'm a little surprised that it wasn't revamped or anything, that they kept it the same.

and it's very reminiscent of what seekers notes used to look like with its old UI and overall atmosphere. That of which has been lost as of late. This is just an opinion, though. I'll elaborate on throughout this post.

Seekers notes presents itself to be very mysterious, magical, mystical, that sort of vibe this is taken from their company's website

and you can clearly feel that vibe when you look through it's old locations, and its old UI, the descriptions given to the locations i've included the year it was released as well in the IDs

a handful of the early locations --- some of which had makeovers -- for reference. You can tell that it holds this almost.. abandoned sort of feeling in it's details. the mist in the train station, the creeping vines in the alley, the desolate and dirty look to the marketplace then the shattered mirror in the dressing room, the dirty wallpaper

and it's further shown in the descriptions of these locations,

okay, putting the description of the marketplace aside, we can all agree that it still holds an air of mystique, yeah? What i'm getting at is, a lot of the locations are either abandoned or seemed to give a sort of otherworldly feel to it.

Not only this, but also the colour palette of the locations as well, i'll give examples of brighter rooms just to give some variance because a handful of the early locations are set at night

I included the playground in this to give an example of a more "vibrant location in SN, and though these locations are bright and have more colour to them, they're rather desaturated as compared to the locations that SN has been releasing the past couple years

you can see how the locations gradually get more saturated as the years go by but when you compare them to locations released these past 2 years, the differences are very stark

these are locations released one after the other, The Winery in Nov of 2023 and The Antique House in Feb of 2024. It's genuinely such a large difference from what locations used to look like those couple years ago.

I've talked about Antique House on here before, because it was originally a location from Ravenhill that was taken and revamped for Seekers Notes

comparing to what it used to look like before, they very clearly made it more vibrant and not just because it was a CNY themed location because they've had CNY themed locations before and they weren't this saturated

Take these two for example, even though Moon Court is vibrant, and yes, admittedly it is saturated, it's clearly emphasised for the lantern's glow and not the entire location's colours being amped up.

Alongside the locations becoming more saturated, the descriptions of the locations stray further and further away from the initial abandoned and slightly unsettling atmosphere the game had set up

These are locations released one after the other last year spanning from Aug to Nov, and here are its respective descriptions

they've made the locations so much more lived in that it no longer holds the eeriness and desertedness that it had promoted itself to have

I honestly imagine the reason for this change could be Mytona becoming more corporate, or it might be because of it's older audience. A lot of middle aged people play this game and it just might be easier for them to see with more saturated colours.

A couple months ago in Jan, a location called Frosty Alley released, and for a moment, it held that same mysterious energy that seekers notes was once known for with its more monotone colour palette

But many people on facebook had complained about how this location was boring and dull and it just wasn't interesting to them, it generally didn't have a very good response. I like it though, it's very reminiscent of old Seekers Notes (and also informant was included in this event hehe)

[arsene-fixates]

looking back at SN content for reasons and like . uogh. i love you seekers notes art style i need to find someone who can replicate it

this is the intro from when they changed up the intro of the game and they made it into a little visual novel thing! (but they went back to the original now)

informant's in the forth parter of that visual novel and hes SOOOOO CUTE HE HAS LIKE LITTLE HUMS AND "aha!" ITS SO RHUAGGUGYQWGHG i posted about them berfore hessooooooaueggurgehgrb BLOWS UP!