#personal goty

[casteliacityramen]

How would you do a Nine Sols x Pokemon au?

Haha, hello from a different hyper fixation of mine 😅

I feel like nine sols is so strong on its own, I wouldn't do a crossover at all... I can't even entertain the thought. I think I'd just turn them all into absols or something as a pun ... Or I'd probably do a historical and aesthetic swap of some kind.

I'm not satisfied with my own answer of "why I would never!" So I'm going to talk about taking inspirations from Red Candle Games' creative methods.

Mixing ancient/historical aesthetics with future tech is a concept I've ALWAYS loved, even way before the game came out. The whole robots from Castle in the Sky and the guardians from BotW. It's something I've been trying to do more of with the Order and Unova's historical moments: bringing the game's lore and irl inspirations (and also for another secret project down the line teehee)

That being said, I'm not a studio professional. Red Candle games dials this shit up to 11. Their coined term of "Taopunk" is fucking incredible. This game is so "my shit" that when I heard there was an art book, I bought it immediately.

So while I can't imagine myself making a crossover, nine sol's aesthetic 'vibe' is something I can see myself mixing into another one of my pokemon stories, if not this one.

[fae-iii]

What's your favorite game you played this year?

Pikmin in general hit me really hard this year. I finally played Pikmin 3 in anticipation for 4 after not doing that for, like, a decade for some reason and I really liked it! Pikmin 4 was great too! I also revisited the original 1 + 2 on Switch and they definitely show age (those final caves in 2 in particular, just dire), but they hold up pretty well. Strong recommendations on all those, 4's probably my personal game of the year though!

I hadn't realized the hundreds of hours I put into 2 as a kid would just have my brain reactivate after all these years with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yQJAGtk8X8 playing on loop in my head for hours after every play session and I had to, like, stop playing before bed cuz I was losing sleep, lol.

Also big shout out to J.J. MacField and Night in the Woods; shorter, emotional narrative games that I really enjoyed, but not necessarily for their gameplay.

Also don't wanna inflate your ego or nothing and I've already gushed about it to you on several occasions, but i did really enjoy Retrush! It has it's rough patches, but everything on my list does. Honestly, other than maybe Pikmin, probably the game that I most kept turning off, thinking that I was done, only to quickly start back up until it was 100% done. Which is really something considering it was on PC and not on it's own dedicated device. Very excited to see whatever other projects you get involved in!

My amount of gaming hours this year pales in comparison to last year, more varied though. For some of those lost hours I picked up a new hobby with pixel art and that's kinda related to gaming and I really like it, so special shout out to that too!

Actually, that's pretty much all the games I played this year that I hadn't prior to this year. Another special shout out to Metroid Prime Remastered which was also great and that this is among the years "least favorites" proves I played only winners this year!

...uh, what else did I play, lol... pokemon *anything*'s a given... Shanghai Pocket for the Gameboy Color!!!! (I got this one cuz it was cheap and I liked the cute pixel art you get to see after completing a level. Turns out you can be bad at Mahjongg).