Trauma Pro

Game developer who revels in his own misery and makes a big fuss about stuff that wouldn't matter to most people. My alt is @suspicious-bystander.

[trauma-pro]

My dearest friends, this is the last update that i'm gonna be publishing for Trauma Football, unless someone points out a game breaking bug or some shit like that... All the content i wanted to put in the game is here, and i'm proud of what i could make in these short 9 months. Enjoy!

Trauma Football on Steam

A football game unlike anything you've ever seen before! Experience the thrill of dealing with a mentally unstable boss, nagging journalists

GAMEPLAY CHANGES: -Added audio cues for when the Berserk effect ends and for when you can use it again. -Recalculated how the opponent's stats increases in Streak and Season mode. -Recalculated effectiveness of the Resistance skill. -Recalculated effectiveness of Attitude on various CPU behaviours. -Slightly reworked goalkeeper behaviour. -You can change teams multiple times now, as long as you pay a fee. -Fixed a bug that would cause you to pass the ball to a team mate unintentionally. -Fixed a bug that would temporarily prevent any player to pick up the ball. -Fixed a bug where a Score mode game wouldnt properly end if the winning point happened via ref bump penalty. -Fixed a couple inputs for gamepad. -Turbo mode is now fully stable. Somewhat. I think. -Other minor adjustments.

AESTHETIC CHANGES: -Improved animation transitions. -Added crowd and benches behind the front cam. -The easter egg audio will now appear less frequently. -Added patches of grass on the field for extra realism. -Slightly improved the effects for various weather conditions. -Slightly toned down the post-processing effects. -Corrected and modified a few texts and dialogues. -Replaced Mariuccha Alchemy Queen poster. -Other minor adjustments.

MANAGER MODE: -Added the option to change team (doesn't undo upgrade purchases). -All games will now have a referee. -Recalculated how the opponent's stats increase according to your current record. -The captain of your team will not pass the ball unless you tell him to.

OTHER: -Credited Freesound in the Credits screen. -Updated the Steam's graphics.

[trauma-pro]

Club Drive is the worst kind of bad, one that feels deeply personal... at least for me. Probably not for you, for you this is a lot more likely to be just your regular everyday brand of bad. Anyway.

Right off the bat, the races have no CPU. It's either split screen with someone else or you going from point A to point B all by yourself. No CPU. The high-scores are hilariously bad too so it's not even like you can work towards reaching an arbitrary goal to compensate for the lack of real opponents, attempting to outdo your personal bests until you get bored is all you have. On top of the high-scores you're also given personal rankings at the end of each race, sometimes i'm ranked Cabbie, sometimes Insurance Risk, sometimes Good Hand. What in the world is any of that supposed to mean? Is a Cabbie better than a Good Hand? When i get told i'm a Rookie i assume it means i didn't do well... but did i do worse than an Insurance Risk? Is being an Insurance Risk good or bad? Someone please answer my appeals to sanity and decor.

But regular races aren't the only thing you do in this game. Alongside the pitiful 4 available tracks there exists a variant for each of them made to host a collectathon mode, where you have to pick up the selected amount of power cells before your opponent does. Not much thought went into designing both tracks and spawn points, but there is an actual CPU opponent in here. It's so bad that it might as well not exist, and the only real difficulty spike it might offer is when you accidentally bump into him while trying to figure out the terrible camera. In a better game something like this could have been a fun diversion, Jak X has something that plays similar if i remember correctly. Rankings are here too and they're just as confusing. A Tag mode is here too but this one is multiplayer only. Assuming it is exactly what it sounds like and they didn't find a way to ruin it, and also assuming that you have a friend desperate enough to play Club Drive with you, AND also assuming that rankings are given out, this might be the best mode available, and i can't play it.

The manual implies that this game takes place a century in the future in a big dedicated racing theme park and cars used to be illegal because they're too dangerous, but not anymore because some scientist figured out the perfect algorithm for... something. It's not made clear. I mean. I've certainly never heard that one before. Nothing is said about whether someone ranked Hog Wild is better than someone who scored Wheelin' n Dealin', which i find to be an unacceptable oversight.

I'll give Club Drive some sorely needed praise for actually having a passable frame-rate and a solid drawing distance compared to any 3D game i've played for Atari consoles so far, but that's only because the graphics lack any actual texture and the geometry looks like the work of someone who tinkered with a pirated version of Sketchup for a couple hours and thought he could call himself a modeler.

So then, what the heck was i implying at the beginning of the review when i said that this game's shortcomings hurt on a personal level? You see, i'm a hobbyst game developer, and the first program i've ever properly learned is called 3DRad. Not the most popular software by any means, it's very old, very jank, adopted by people who either ore too lazy to code or represent a rare strand of european autism, with no inbetween, and its main purpose was to create... racing games. The simplistic 3D graphics, the wonky physics, the bizarre attempt at subverting a whole genre just because sticking to its fundamentals is too complicated, the nonsensical tacked on lore, the cheap repetitive music. Everything hits a bit too close home LMFAO.

[trauma-pro]

Apparently Atari was supposed to release a cartridge-based handheld console in '81, meant mainly to port arcade games on more consumer-oriented hardware. The Atari 50 Collection is very vague regarding the reason behind its cancellation, but assuming that everything went according to plan, could you imagine how different the videogame landscape would have looked like in the 90's if Atari beat Nintendo's Gameboy to the punch by nearly a decade, back when the company was still at its most reputable? From the SNES up until the Wii, Nintendo's home console market was getting diminishing returns one release after the other, and God only knows where they'd be by the mid 2000's if not thanks to their prolific handhelds. Apples and oranges of course, and nothing would indicate that Nintendo wouldn't still find success on this market with a different approach, but it's fun to speculate about a world in which Atari was the one kept afloat by its portables division. Would we be getting a Jaguar 2? The Atari PUMA??? What would the Lynx have looked like, now able to model itself after a fruitful predecessor? Speaking of the Lynx... The only things i know about it are that it was very expensive, it ate batteries like a motherfucker and it was as large as a surf board. Never heard anything about the games themselves. The cover for Warbirds looked nice, so why not start from there?

For a handheld game that came out in 1990, Warbirds is impressively good on a graphical level. The chonky pixels may seem offputting at first, but considering how small the Lynx screen is compared to the average monitor/LCD screen you'll be playing this in through Atari 50, the overall presentation is really nice, very colorfoul and stylized even within the tight hardware limitations. But the real standout is how smooth the 3D rendering is, not looking much worse than what you'd see on a Super Nintendo, an aspect that works exceedingly in favour of a flying simulator.

Warbirds has a surprisingly modern approach to its game design, almost feeling more like a sandbox rather than a competitive race to the high score. You're given plenty of freedom to customize your experience, going from ammo quantity, to physics, to health total, even the respawn points of each plane can be toggled, and no specific combination of these settings yields any kind of penalty of reward, it's all up to your personal preferences. Some neat quality of life features worth noting as well, like being able to switch cameras inside the plane and the height/rotation meter. I've also gotta mention the instruction manual, that does a good job at explaining most of the game's mechanics while acting as your drill instructor, with a few comic book style vignettes in between tutorials. I'm really happy in general that this collection preserves manuals and flyers, since most of the games here were meant to be played alongside them and i would have been completely lost without it for Warbird.

Unfortunately, this game is as interesting as it is flawed. While the 3D rendering is impressive for a handheld, it suffers from low frame rate and drawing distance, both things that make it harder to figure out if you're actually hitting your foes. This is yet another game in the collection that could have benefitted from an overclocking setting. A more precise method to gauge the health of both your opponent and yourself would have partially solved this issue, but nothing of the sort exists here. If you don't toggle the setting for unlimited ammos, you're supposed to land on a warehouse to reload each time you run out. That's fine, except even after reading the manual i don't have the faintest clue of what the correct way to land is, and trust me i've tried.

My biggest issue with Warbirds is that once you've tinkered enough with the settings you're not left with much to do. There's only 5 missions in total and they all feel samey, taking place in the same area and with the same red planes. While i can absolutely recognize and praise all the effort that went into squeezing every little bit of hardware out of the Lynx to make this game a thing, many corners had to be cut as a result, and the finished product is a flying simulator that is a neat novelty, but little more than that.

[trauma-pro]

Love 'em, hate 'em, raise 'em! The Trauma Pets are coming on Steam June 15th! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4236490/Trauma_Pets/

[trauma-pro]

In the documentary section of the Atari 50 Collection there is a brief summary of the company's short lived pinball division, and reading it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. You don't see people critically analyze pinball machines the same way they'd do with videogames or other forms of entertainment, at least nowadays. And it's so surreal to be reminded that this used to be not only a proper industry back in the 70's, but one that utilized what was at the time cutting edge technology, comprised of many companies trying to one up each others with all sorts of gimmicks and innovations... It saddened me a bit to realize how nowadays all most people would take in consideration when looking at a pinball machine is whether it's plastered with Lord of the Rings branding or not. When i was a kid i used to really like playing with this UFO themed pinball machine they had at the place my dad works at, brought back memories of lucking my way into a really high score and being super hyped about it.

And this will inevitably beg the question: what that makes a pinball machine good? What are the mechanisms that would make you prefer one machine over another? Many talented engineers and programmers had to ask themselves these questions back in the day in order to create a compelling product, and yet all the tweaks, subversions and gambles happening in that prolific short window of time which went on to shape the pinball meta as we know it today are given for granted. Maybe i will find a concrete answer within Ruiner Pinball. Or maybe not.

Ruiner Pinball isn't just a no-thrills simulator, of course. It takes a lot of liberties with the concept that wouldn't be possible in real life, like making one of its tables abnormally long and having the other one take up two separate fields sitting next to each others; there's also a lot of moving objects whenever you hit certain triggers that would be impossible to replicate on an actual table. The ball physics may be a bit jittery once in a while, but generally i thought they behaved realistically enough for a game that is this old. When it comes to the aesthetics, both tables are impressively detailed and colorfoul, perfectly nailing the theming they're going for, unfortunately the soundtrack doesn't match this level of effort and is rather forgettable. I wish there was a more visually helpful way to keep track of the score increases, maybe adding a little number next to the ball every time it hits something. Having to look up every time you're curious to see how you're doing can be distracting.

In the end, while i did have some dumb fun with Ruiner Pinball, it's hard to look past the fact that only 2 tables to choose from are a pittance and that beating the high score in both of them takes little practice, leaving you with not much reason to come back to it once you've had your fix.

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends! It's week 7 of my gamedevving adventure, my birthday came and went just like it came and went all other years prior, and i'm eager to tell you about what i've been up to!

For the first time since the earlier days of development, i've been focused on the game's writing above all else. After a brief testing session i said to myself "this island feels so empty" so i wrote and implemented randomly spawning NPCs using sprites from Trauma Football that will talk about what's going on inside Batticuore to make it clearer that you're not the only goober lurking around. Corrections of various kinds have been made to other parts as to make the narrative more consistent. Writing is fun.

Nothing too big to report in other areas: minor bug fixes, rebalancings, aesthetic improvements... all bases have been touched, even if just barely. I think i wanna add one last activity, something that you can do with your Trauma Pet without having to think about how it's connected to all other parts of the island. We'll get there when we get there, i guess.

As for the more "meta" stuff that's been happening: the game has been slightly postponed once again, this time to the 15th of June. More and more bugs have been popping up that i'm not 100% sure if i'll be able to fix by June 1st so i'm giving myself a bit of extra leeway and making sure that Trauma Pets doesn't launch in a state similar to those of my other Trauma games I.E. broken as FUCK. Pls understand.

Next week i'll be finally posting a trailer for the game that i can put on my Steam page and elsewhere, i have a couple ideas on how i want that whole ordeal to go but you'll have to wait and see until it's properly put together!

Wishlist Trauma Pets: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4236490/Trauma_Pets/

[trauma-pro]

My favorite part of looking for stuff to play on the Dreamcast as a console is discovering so many cool looking games that I've never heard of or seen before. One of these is PenPen TriIcelon, a bizarre attempt at a racing game that tried to capitalize on the popularity of Tamagochi, Pokémon, and critter breeding in general.

Instead of cars, like most other racing games, you take control of one of the 8 PenPens, the creatures that give this game its name.

The races are broken up into 3 sections: one in which you move on foot, one underwater, and one in which you drag yourself across a slippery surface, and each of the PenPens will have a discipline that they favor and others that they may be weaker at.

The sliding parts are the closest gameplay section to a traditional racing game, except instead of having to hold down the acceleration button, you have to repeatedly press it with the right timing based on the movement of your PenPen's arms. It sounds like it might get tiring or at least annoying in the long run, but surprisingly it doesn't. The underwater sections work the same way, and I was prepared to find them the worst part of the game, but I ended up considering them my favorite. There’s something quite satisfying about successfully navigating these obstacle-filled environments that the flat surfaces of the slippery sections simply can’t provide. The running doesn’t quite reach the same heights, unfortunately, with stiff controls and less inspired routes than its two counterparts. I do appreciate the way the "combat" is handled, however simple it is: you can spam your attack without any limitations, and if you hit your target you not only stun them, but you receive a momentary boost to your base speed, which otherwise will become a brief stun if you happen to miss your opponent.

Overall, PenPen Tricelon is a fun and unique enough game, but it has very little to offer to hold your attention for any considerable length of time. There are only 4 courses in total, and while their average duration for a single lap is much longer than that of an average racing game, in 15 minutes at most you've seen everything there is to see. For each of these courses there are 3 different variations, with different obstacles, more players on the track and, in the case of the highest difficulty, a short section of track after you pass the finish line, but the song and dance in the end remains the same. I don't think this game would necessarily need power ups to keep the gameplay fun, like in the case of Mario Kart etc., but their presence would have at least helped to give more variety to the races if they had been there.

There is not much in terms of modes either, a time trial where you can also test individual sections of any course, and a mode where winning races makes you unlock hats that can be used to customize the various PenPens. These hats do not grant bonuses of any kind and are only cosmetic, resulting in another missed opportunity to provide variety.

It's a shame that PenPen TriIcelon never went beyond the first game, because the foundations to create something really fun for the sequel are all there. If only there was more content.

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends!

Week number six of this fun little adventure of mine is now in the books, and i'm here to tell you all about it. Trauma Pets is reaching the end of its development cycle, but as anyone who's worked on a videogame will tell you: the last stretch is the one that gives you the most headaches.

I went through a testing session that was more meticolous than any other i've been doing over the course of the last 6 months, and the stuff i had to replace, tweak, fix or downright remove kept piling on and on. That might sound daunting... and in a way it was, but 90% of the work ahead of me consisted in simple modifications that required at worst a few minutes each, as i knew from the start what to do and how to do it.

As for the stuff that's been added, my priority for this week was to add variance whenever possible in all forms of gameplay. If i want players to go through all the minigames i've added more than once i'll have to make sure that their dedication is rewarded with morsels of new content to spice things up.

I've updated all screenshots on the Steam/Jolt/Itch page once again. This time the changes are very minor but i'm trying to keep everyone up to date as soon as possible.

See you next week!

Trauma Pets on Steam

Trauma Pets is a videogame about managing a newly found race of violent critters however you'd like. Don't let moral qualms distract you fro

[trauma-pro]

I played Animal Crossing New Horizons a few years back, and while it did have an undeniable charm to it and lots of things to do, its luster wore off after not too long. I initially thought this kind of game was just not for me, until some time later i came across a Youtube video talking about all of New Horizon's shortcomings if compared to its prequels, which led me to a short rabbit hole made up of wikis and forum posts, all detailing what got lost when the series transitioned to the Switch. "I guess i just played the wrong one" i said to myself.

Later on i got curious about the Harvest Moon series, and dedicated a few hours to Hero of Leaf Valley… I didn't like it. I did get warned, to be fair, on the totally legal website from which i purchased my digital copy, that this wouldn't have been the best introduction to the series. I'm a natural born contrarian, so i was drawn in by the lukewarm reception Hero of Leaf Valley received, hoping i was gonna stumble across a hidden gem. "I guess the critics were right" i said to myself.

Goodness gracious, dearie me! Why couldn't i just find a game about chilling in a small town full of eccentric people that was capable of scratching this itch of mine? Stardew Valley would have been a safe choice, for sure. It's a critically acclaimed indie success story that according to many even surpassed its source of inspiration, Harvest Moon itself. Why not try that one? Well, the short of it is that i'm a hipster. But another big reason is that Kynseed, the game i ended up playing in its stead, was developed by some of the people who worked on the Fable series, and Fable 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. Moonring was also made by a Fable alumni, and that one was amazing, so surely i was in for a great time, right?

Well, if there is one legitimate gameplay complaint that i can express, is that a lot of the game's content is dripfed though a story mode that goes on for quite a while if you're not entirely dedicated on completing it from the get-go. Kynseed belongs to a genre meant to be played for many many hours, and i understand that this choice was made to maintain a sense of discovery and intrigue for as long as possible before the sense of routine truly settled in, but i wasn't terribly interested in playing it. I just wanted to have the majority of the areas and the mechanics available from the start, or that at least it would take much less to unlock them. And this is very lame of me.

I don't want to make the point that the time Kynseed demands from me is made of senseless padding, because even with just a portion of the game unlocked there is a lot of variety in what you can entertain yourself with, nor i want to make it look like "i don't have time/energy for long games anymore, i'm a mature adult (with a business degree)" because just like it's the case for most of the people who say this kinda nonsense, that's really not true.

What i really mean is that… this kind of game isn't for me. I respect what Kynseed is setting up to accomplish with its very unique atmosphere and lore, and i'm sure many of the people who picked it up are having a great time either uncovering all its secrets or just immersing themselves in the cozy world it has to offer, but i couldn't. And again, i'm mad lame for that. Anyway, how's that Fable reboot going?

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends!

This fifth week of reporting to you all what's been going down with Trauma Pets has been uh, quite an eventful one, both within the confines of the Unity inspector and my personal life, but we'll just talk about the stuff that's relevant. Remember the two mini-games i talked about implementing on my last devlog? Well, they're both now fully operational! Once i finally figured out what i want to do, they didn't take too much out of my free time, admittedly, to put together as i've created such an extensive groundwork for this kinda stuff already. Now the game feels a lot more like something worth charging money over, and given i have only 3 weeks before being able to submit a testable build to Steam, i'm feeling like a big weight has been taken off of my wide and chiseled chest.

As for all the other stuff that kept me busy, most of my energies were spent fixing up as many bugs as i could find, many of which were encountered by accident as i was implementing new things. There's still plenty of improvements that need to be made in the graphics, in the interface, in the lore, in the mini-game balancing and i'll come up with a few more features along the way that will require a fair amount of attention on top of everything else, but i'm determined to put out the best game i can make with my own two hands. See you in june!

Trauma Pets on Steam

Trauma Pets is a videogame about managing a newly found race of violent critters however you'd like. Don't let moral qualms distract you fro

[trauma-pro]

I have bought Way of the Samurai 2 on two different occasions, once when i was a widdle baby, scared away by the sight of blood and lack of italian translation, and yet again when i was a bit older, by around a decade and a half. I do remember finding the premise of roaming a small region of edo era Japan in which you have full control over the flow of the story to be really fascinating, but those fighting mechanics still give me nightmares. The fourth sequel of this somewhat obscure series... actually isn't much better in that regard. Best we change subject, maybe.

So anyway, other than fighting what exactly do you do in Way of the Samurai 4? You live through the same 5 days over and over until you get the good ending, pretty much. This rule isn't entirely consistent with EVERYTHING for the sake of not letting players accidentally ruin their entire save file on a first playthrough, but quite a few things will carry over when the timeline resets, including your own equipment, meaning you'll eventually have to increase the difficulty the more you play unless you're down with just one-shotting everything once your weapons are strong enough. Which you might be, after you raise the difficulty certain enemies can take an eternity to take down because their health regenerates very quickly if you don't entirely focus on them, and you have to fight large mobs all the time. The combat is bad, just spam Spring Harvest. It's fine.

The short time it might take you to see the credits on your first playthrough and the overall tiny size of the map might lead you to think that the groundhog day structuring of the plot is an attempt at stretching the game to the absolute limit to pad out its runtime, but that couldn't be further from the truth. WotS4 is PACKED with content. This is a game that often rewards players who like to experiment, with many instances in which you can achieve the same result in multiple ways or get unexpected results if you get creative, and considering how many times you have to go through the story, that aspect was handled remarkably well. Even after starting over for the 8th time i still felt like there was more stuff out there to do, not even including secondary quests or managing the dojo. You're also given quite a lot of variety in terms of character customization, weapons and stances. Heck, you can even create your own weapons and stances! Doesn't make the combat any better, but in a game with good combat this would be a really dope feature.

Taking a shot in the dark here, but i doubt most of the players who played Way of the Samurai 4 from top to bottom did so without some sort of guide by their side for at least a couple of the things they were interested in doing. There is a lot of unnecessary crypticism regarding many of certain gameplay mechanics and a lot of the story progression, and while much of it does fade away the more you play and figure things out for yourself, it's more often due to a process of trial and error rather than having a clear picture of what you want to do and enacting it. The Light of Hope path, for example. You didn't figure it out on your own. Don't even try to pretend otherwise. You saw the purple quest blocks in the timeline screen, attempted everything you could think of to access them and once that didn't work you googled the. Is that fun? I don't think it's fun. Another thing i didn't like, sometimes picking one option over another will result in a different scene, but not in a way that is actually affected by your actions. Mild spoilers for the 2 earlier and least consequential endings: why do you get killed if you have a sponsor, but survive if you don't have one?

I have more examples, but i don't wanna sound too negative. Overall, i had quite a blast going through this game despite its flaws and i do invite you to experience the wackyness it has to offer for yourself. Not something for everyone, for sure, but if the premise intrigues you and you're willing to excuse the bad combat, you'll find nothing like it... except the other Way of the Samurai games, of course. You can tell children that you're in love with them. Is Laura some sort of child prodigy? A small person? What's her deal?

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends! Today marks the first full month i've been writing weekly devlogs for Trauma Pets, do i have something flashy and fun to show off in celebration? No LOL

That's not to say i didn't get quite a lot of shit done, though. I implemented an important QoL feature to keep track of all your progress more efficiently as you do stuff on Batticuore Island, with the rest of my programming prowess being spent on lots of superfluous nothingness that will make the game feel a bit more alive than it was the previous week.

Writing was also a priority. I corrected and re-edited some of the dialogue and flavour text to be consistent with the new direction i'm going with, on top of adding new stuff that was long overdue.

Preparatives for a couple new minigames have been prepared. I won't feel fully satisfied with Trauma Pets until players will have at least two more means of aimless distractions at their disposal, and while i'm not quite sure yet of how those minigames play be like, there's plenty of time still to figure it out.

My distractions of the week were Brutal Legend and Sanctum 2, didn't spend as much time on them as i did on MKX, which i suppose is good for productivity, but i did enjoy both nevertheless.

Trauma Pets on Steam

Trauma Pets is a videogame about managing a newly found race of violent critters however you'd like. Don't let moral qualms distract you fro

[trauma-pro]

OHHH HEY OHHH! OHHH HEY HO! So anyway, i wanted to give myself an early christmas treat and i raided the local thrift store of its comic books and miscellaneous magazines and trading cards. The gaming section was full of football games and COD, but in the middle of all that soulless yearly slop i found a copy of WWE '12, MY kind of yearly slop! This was the first wrestling game i bought when i started watching again, lots of nostalgia with this one, but ever since i played so much more stuff, will it hold back when compared to my very fuzzy memories?

Most recent WWE game i played was 2K19, which was also a long ass time ago, i do remember WWE games from PS3/360 onwards having a lot of content, but i was absolutely not ready for all the customization options i had at my disposal. Properly overwhelmed. The character editor is something else, not only you can create your own looks and moveset, you can also stitch together your own entrance, create your own finisher and even put together an approximation of a titantron. Custom taunts are missing from the older games, but other than that you have so many options you won't even know what to do with lots of them. Arena creation is nothing special, but it's neat that it's there.

Massive roster as you'd expect, tons of game modes as you'd expect, predatory DLC as you'd expect. Not gonna go through every little nook and cranny since this review will already be long as is.

I have fond memories about Road To Wrestlemania from when i first played this game, and the storylines themselves are still entertaining for what they are, but this kind of mode doesn't hold a candle to either the Season mode from past games or MyRise from those that came after. It's just a bunch of matches with no branching paths or managerial aspects, and you can't even play the individual storylines in the order you prefer. Meh.

On the other hand, Universe is every bit as good as i've seen people say. I watched the white bois at Newlegacyinc go through it some time ago and i was concerned this would have ruined the experience for myself after seeing possibly all of the scenarios this mode had to offer, but to my surprise i still found a ton of new stuff as i was trying to carry my edgy OC to the top of the food chain.

Like i said in my review for Dissidia Duodecim, i'm not too big into using story/quest editors for myself, but after trying the one this game has to offer and after playing a couple of the template storylines they used to showcase it, i find it beyond criminal that this feature has been dropped in future releases. It's impressively detailed as is, and if modern 2K games had it, with all the proper quality of life and extra features it should have, i probably wouldn't have given up on the series. Not because i'd use it myself, but because having an accessible way to experience hand first the e-feds of edgy teenagers and autistic adults alike would increase my lifespan by a few years. If i could access stories in this game without needing a subscription to Xbox Live this rating would be at least a whole star higher.

The biggest issue with WWE '12 really is that the wrestling itself is SO ass. In the back of the box it says they updated the gameplay to be snappier and more fast paced compared to last year's release, if there's any truth to that then good lord i don't even want to imagine what Smackdown vs Raw 11 was like. Don't get me wrong, in terms of how much control you have over your own actions this aspect of the game is just as packed with content as anything else, and you do have a decent amount of universal customization for many of the Corre mechanics, but none of that does anything to improve the fun factor. I don't care if this is just a matter of me wanting every wrestling game to play like HCTP, i'd happily shave off most of the simulative minutiae Yukes definitely worked oh so hard to implement in the gameplay, if it resulted in all of the wrestlers moving a lil bit faster and all of the moves having a lil more weight to them. And the QTEs, oh my Lord, they're EVERYWHERE. QTEs for kicking out of a pin, for escaping a submission, for attempting submission, for throwing someone off the top rope, for resisting getting thrown off the top rope, for snapping out of confusion, for making a comeback, for getting out of a collar-and-elbow, for doing reversals, it's ENDLESS. The reversals in particular are the fucking worst. In theory the short window of time in which you can pull them off should make the game more skill based, in practice my index finger is begging me for mercy because reversals and counter reversals and counter counter reversals are all you fucking do in this game. Specifically, getting your finisher meter stolen after someone reverses you is so beyond lame because you pretty much can't do anything about it and building up meter without taunt spamming takes a million years.

Just watch the CPU wrestlers beat each others up in Universe. That should be fun.

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends! The third devlog on this thrilling weekly series should finally bring in some sizzle to the steak. I'm not sure if this turn of phrase is appropriate here or even worded correctly but i've always wanted to say it... anyway....

The minigame i've talked to you about last week has been finished up and made fully functional. Like it's the case for all other minigames it'll be inevitably bound to receive new features or be rebalanced by the time of release, and i may already have a couple ideas on what to do.

Speaking of, the biggest bulk of programming this week was dedicated in doing just that, reworking the other minigames. I don't get the same level of dopamine rush in my brain when i fix stuff instead of creating it, but many instrumental changes were made to the structure for many of them and i'm very happy with the result.

To close off, a decent amount of writing was also involved, for the first time in a while. After the mastodontic amount of text i've writtern for Trauma Football i got a bit of a writer's block, spacing out all of the lore and flavour text in my gamedevving schedule rather than doing things in bulk, which made it harder to keep track of everything. Having all of the story beats of a given section laid out all in a single text file for once was rather satisfying and will overall result in a better reading experience.

Oh, and i've updated screenshots again lol... nothing major yet but i had to better show some of the aesthetic changes i've worked on the last 2 weeks.

Trauma Pets on Steam

Trauma Pets is a videogame about managing a newly found race of violent critters however you'd like. Don't let moral qualms distract you fro

[trauma-pro]

I, Robot has me writing this review with my hands sweaty and my teeth clenched, putting me in a position in which i sincerely question my own mental sanity. Not because of the game itself (well, that too actually) but because of the malignant aura surrounding it. I'm currently feeling like the living trope of the man who gets infatuated with a book, a painting or an album to the point where it drives him mad because said item turns out to be cursed, or something like that.

WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT I, ROBOT?

This is crazy to me. The first game with proper real-time polygonal 3D graphics in history, nearly 10 years before any console could even outdo its graphical complexity (more than 10 if we discount the Jaguar, which we should for the sake of making the achievement feel more impressive)... and the Atari 50 Collection doesn't spend more than a couple lines discussing it, almost sweeping it under the rug. Almost like they're aknowledging its existence out of obligation, hoping that such an underwhelming introduction would make people not stick around for long enough to investigate, instead drawn by the glitter and the pomposity with which more notable titles are presented, hoping that it will make them forget about what they just laid their eyes on. BUT WHY? No comments about the challenges and the potential that come with such a yet unexplored technology? Not gonna talk about the groundbreaking impact on the industry Atari could have left if this game turned out to be a success? The whole process, expectations and disappointments, entirely discarded? WHY?

In an age in which technological advancements were such an important part of marketing you'd think a game like this would have set the world on fire, right? And it's not just the fact that the graphics of I, Robot are ahead of their time, the game's amazing too! NOT PERFECT by any means of course, the moveable camera for example is still not enough to prevent some headaches with the perspective, but the fact that you can even do that to begin with represents such a level of forward thinking, back when so much of the shit that today we define as basic was still not yet fully understood, that i don't think should be understated. The shooting sections would have visually blown out of the water anything else that was in the market at the time and the basic gameplay loop of the puzzles feels fresh even to this day. WHY DIDN'T PEOPLE LIKE THIS? WHY AREN'T PEOPLE RE-DISCOVERING THIS IN MODERN TIMES AND TURNING IT INTO A CULT CLASSIC?

The answer has to be in the lore described on the flyer. Hidden in plain sight, meant to be deciphered by a select few, no matter how many years it'll take for the prophecy to unfold. A giant all-seeing eye, dictating and enforcing the law of the world, and that law has only one rule: no jumping. No jumping. Jumpman. Super Mario's original moniker. One year after I, Robot's release, Super Mario would make its NES debut, turning the console into the next big thing and the Atari into yesterday's news... could have i stopped this? Could anyone have? And how? Is I, Robot the physical manifestation of Atari's inevitable doom? Maybe i will find the answers i'm looking for in the painting program you can toy with during the intermissions. Mario... Paint. I'm getting closer.

Ok uh so, i just found out that they made a remake for this game, a few months ago no less, which makes my ramblings about the supposed conspiracy to keep I, Robot's existence nothing more than a shameful open secret fall completely flat but my unironic point that i'm genuinely baffled at how this game isn't talked about more still stands. Especially given historical context and all.

[trauma-pro]

Finally gotten around to playing Injustice 2, i know you suckers were all waiting to hear what i have to say, so i'll cut the intro short.

Many improvements have been made to the gameplay mechanics to make things more balanced and fun. Throwable objects can now be blocked, they don't inflict as much damage and aren't as spammable as they used to be; Supermoves have been made easier to dodge and look a lot cooler in general; Clashes take up less time and have more unique character-specific dialogue; many character actions have been tweaked to be more unique. All good stuff. I have no idea how characters fare against each others in a more competitive setting, as i'm very much still a scrub, so i won't comment on that. Only real criticism i can offer, the single life-bar system is still here and i still don't like it, otherwise this is a super fun game to play. Like in the case of Injustice 1, try toying with the release check toggle both on or off to decide which one fits you best, as to avoid any possible frustration.

The Training mode has been greatly expanded from the prequel, offering lessons about not just the basic commands, but also for all sorts of scenarios and opportunities, adding TAS demonstrations to help make things clearer; they even made character-specific tutorials in case you wanna focus on your main. Lots of effort went into giving new players all the tools they need to git gud and it's very appreciated as someone who's always had a hard time mastering the genre, despite the love i have for it.

Ignoring the inevitable improvements on the realism that you'd expect in the generational gap between Injustice 1 and 2, the sequel moves away from the needlessly gritty and minimalist aesthetics that were in vogue by the time 1 came out, adding a lot more color to both arenas and costumes, making the UI more elaborate and offering a more intense soundtrack, even if this one is still not particularly memorable. The dialogue intros from Mortal Kombat have been implemented here as well, and while a few more lines are repeated from character to character than i'd like, this is still leagues above any other fighter that tries to have pre or post fight character interactions.

Like everything i just described, the Story mode has been considerably improved compared to its past iteration, having better written dialogues, better actors and better direction. Unfortunately the chapter system hinders what could have otherwise been a genuinely great story by filling it with jobber fights that feel out of nowhere and usually also lead nowhere, just for the sake of having 4 fights per chapter. The lame minigames have been replaced with being able to pick between 2 characters for certain fights, which i'd consider a mild upgrade, and doing all possible combinations allows you to see both endings. Gameplay-wise this is the classic NRS Story mode, offering little that makes it unique compared to regular CPU fights, unfortunately.

I listed so many things that Injustice 2 does better than the original, but there's one fatal flaw that drags the whole game down with it, rendering it in my opinion "only" as good as Injustice 1 overall, meaning that i found it to be still more than respectably rad. That fatal flaw is the Multiverse modes. Simply put, these randomly generated events that get reset every few hours don't hold a candle to the S.T.A.R. Labs and all the variety and charm that mode offered. Secondary objectives only appear once in a while and only one per fight, there's no special victory conditions, the modifiers have been heavily stripped down, no obstacle courses, no mini-games, no illustrations nor unique pre-fight dialogues, NOTHING. It's just ladder after ladder with the absolute barest story premise, with no connection whatsoever between the characters you have to fight or the one you have to use to get extra rewards. I HATE this mode.

And i don't just hate it because it's lame and uncreative, i hate it because everything about it makes the rest of the game worse. Instead of regular costumes, Injustice 2 introduces individual body parts that can be combined however you please; this should be cool as fuck, except to even get to wear them you need to grind Multiverse mode for each character you wanna dress up because all body parts have stats and level requirements. Not only that, while in some cases the rewards are fixed depending on what part of the game you're playing, the majority of equipment you unlock is through fucking lootboxes, adding an unnecessary element of randomness. NOT ONLY THAT, but color changes are prohibitely expensive and you will have to spend real life money to get the currency necessary to unlock more than a tiny handful of them. There's actually a harder version of the Multiverse that does have static ladders, and apparently that's where you get to see the endings, but the requirements to even get to play any of them are straight up ridicoulus. You gotta grind your character to the max level, spend a certain amount of currency and some other arbitrary bullshit that does nothing but artificially inflate the length of the single player gameplay. This could have been a simple arcade ladder with no thrills and no gimmicks, but they had to overcomplicate it for the sake of it. [CORRECTION: you can access endings in the Battle Simulator, but it still works with the gear system, which is lame.] Do you wanna know how little confidence the developers had in Multiverse being actually fun to play? They put the option to just let the AI play for you. I can't believe this isn't discussed more. They are so aware that the mode is shit that they will let it play itself. That is unbelievable to me.

I try my best to not throw the word enshittification around like i've seen some other people do, but Injustice 2 is the quintessential example of a good game being ruined because of it. It's not a game that strives to be an entertaining finite experience that values your time and your enjoyment, with carefully placed rewards, well thought out challenges and a difficulty that entirely depends on your skill. It's a phone game. And it's so much worse because i like the gameplay, i like the characters, i like the story, i like the graphics, i like everything about this game except how much contempt it has for you.

[trauma-pro]

Hello to all, my friends, and happy Easter! The second week of documenting my work on Trauma Pets has been all over the place, both in real life and within the programming side of things, but i'm happy to say that overall things turned out for the better.

Mortal Kombat X has been taking over more of my free time than i anticipated; such a good game this is, belonging to a well respected brand that didn't irreversibly taint its reputation after 2 terrible sequels and a half baked overpriced collection... but hey, that doesn't mean i slacked on the job!

I'm currently split between 2 very different tasks. The one i'm prioritizing the least (for now, of course) is polishing up as much as i humanly can every aspect of the game that is already fully functional, both aesthetically and gameplay-wise; meanwhile, the top priority is brainstorming and implementing a fairly complex minigame that behaves unlike anything i've programmed so far, meaning that i'll have to do a lot of things from scratch, not being quite sure yet of its most minute intricacies. I wish i could give out more details on what that'll be, but revealing anything would spoil some of the story, something that i want you to experience for yourself.

Both of those things have been worked on a satisfactory amount, but i really do hope that my third week of reporting yields more concrete results.

Trauma Pets on Steam

Trauma Pets is a videogame about managing a newly found race of violent critters however you'd like. Don't let moral qualms distract you fro