Entwined Review

E3 2014 was unbelievable. Watching the developer press conferences, I was wholly impressed with the sheer dedication to gamers and the barrage of games announced. However, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, as I will not be able to play the majority of those games for a long while. That is precisely why EA announced the Battlefield: Hardline beta could be played right after the show, why Destiny released their Alpha that night, AND why Sony announced Entwined, available right then and there.

Entwined is very much an indie game, developed by bright students from Carnegie Melon University, with the help of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). SCE does is scouts the globe looking for aspiring young game designers with original ideas, and then they bring those designers in as interns, eventually hiring them full time and publishing their games. This is how Entwined started.

The game begins with a quote; four simple words. These four words combine to form a powerful message: “Always together, forever apart.” These words represent the start of our journey into a game with an incredible story. In Entwined, players assume the roles of two characters simultaneously through use of both analog sticks – an orange fish and a blue bird. These are two creatures very much in love, but cannot unite as lovers. In the game, players have to guide these two creatures through portals, all while filling a meter to its max. Upon completion, the two creatures combine, forming a majestic green dragon. This is repeated nine times, in nine different chapters.

The artistic direction of Entwined is spot-on. It is rare that a game’s art can invoke such emotion in me, but Entwined did just that. I found myself saying, “Wow, that’s beautiful” many times. Entwined’s score is just as perfect. Through each chapter, the combination of relaxing music and breathtaking art allowed my mind to wander to its deepest crevices. Entwined is able to tell a dynamic story through imagery and sound alone.

However, Entwined is one of the more frustrating games I have ever played. While it’s controls are utterly simplistic, they get in the way much too often. Players must guide the creatures through barriers, but miss a barrier, and the meter goes down. Once both meters are filled, players are required to hold L1 and R1 and go through the barriers concurrently. Making one mistake at this point has the potential to bring you back to square one, and it’s very easy to make a mistake.

Overall, in the two hours it took me to complete Entwined, I was taken on an emotional roller coaster through brilliant music and fantastic art. This game has the potential to be an amazing gaming experience, and is, but it’s super frustrating gameplay controls and mechanics take away from that. It has so much potential, but doesn’t quite get the equation right. Regardless, I cannot wait for more from these developers, and I sincerely hope that feedback like mine will be taken into account in the development of their next game.

I give Entwined a 7.5/10

Who is the Crotchety Old Gamer?

Hello my fellow gamers! So recently (not really recently it’s been almost a month now I think hehehe, Sorry!) I won a giveaway from the Crotchety Old Gamer, Thanks by the way! And I was thinking of a way to give him a shout out but was unsure of how to do that. Then the best way for a blogger to give out a shout out to another blogger would have to be by, of course, writing an article about him. SO I emailed this awesome guy and gt a kick ass interview with him. Now you may ask, why interview another blogger? Who better to interview!? A fellow blogger is doing exactly what I’m doing, he’s putting his thought on paper (or word doc) and expressing how he feels about a subject, in this case gaming. We focus to much on the big fish, the game developers, the creators of big company, what about us? What about us as gamers, who better to speak and talk about games than the people who play them?! That’s why I wanted to interview this blogger/gamer, because he understands us gamers, he is a gamer and writer so it all works out. So here are the Q/A I asked, hope you guys enjoy and definitely check out his blog. I’ll link it at the end!

What interested you/motivated you into blogging?

I have always loved gaming, but I love writing more.  After numerous attempts to finish books, scripts and short stories then failing to complete them, I decided to start writing about something I love with a passion: gaming.  When I jumped in I assumed no one would care about what I had to say: it was really just for my own satisfaction and inspiration.  Then something crazy happened.  People were reading. Holy fucking shit.

 

When you write an article, what would you describe your “voice” as?

Good question. I was in the army before and when I write it is a combination of my drill sergeant, and an art critic touched with George Carlin.  I try to maintain a grouchiness that says “I don’t care what you think” but not so much that I am openly hostile toward my readers.  At least not outside the about page.  On top of that I aim for astute and comical.

 

What do you enjoy writing about the most?

Video games.  From a narrative perspective, however, I love fantasy and sci-fi.  When I play games I have always over-analyzed them, and the same goes for movies, shows, books etc.  I always disassemble the narrative elements to ascertain what motivated it, to a certain degree.  Writing about games gives me a good excuse to really delve into a game, analyze it, enjoy it, bathe in it.

 

Is there a certain method to your writing? Or is it usually free for all? 

There is a methodical chaos that I apply to writing articles.  In the first paragraph I put an intro, then there is a sort of game talk start, the body a conclusion where I tell you to buy it or save your money and then I rant about something in the game that pissed me off.  The last part where I rant is only half-serious in many cases, though.  I always try to provide my readers with a balanced look and critique of the game that shows the pros and cons in a unique and entertaining way.

 

What do you hope to achieve with your blog? What is it’s mission statement?

My mission statement is to show people that games are art.  Period.  Games don’t have to be drab or boring or “non-games” to do so, but can be engaging, interesting and moving all at once.  The really talented developers are those that are able to achieve this synthesis between game and non-game elements.

 

What influences you to write? Other blogs?

My biggest influence is Cracked.com.  I love those people and I am going to try my hand at submitting to their prestigious annals.  They deliver interesting news about every damn thing you can imagine in the history of ever.  Seriously.  And they do it in a way that will make you piss yourself laughing.  It is informative and engaging.  Dangerously genius.

 

What do you admire the most in a game? Such as it’s graphics, story line, game play, etc.

as a writer, narrative.  I recognize that a game is more than its story, though, so my thoughts are that achieving the synthesis of a game’s mechanics with its story and artistic elements creates a unique experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life.  All the best games achieve this.

 

What kind of games do you enjoy playing?

Good ones.  Make a bad fucking game and I will tear you the hell apart, employ discretion, talent and creativity and I will build you a little shrine on my blog.  Do all of this and touch me emotionally and I will love you for it.

 

What is your favorite gaming genre?

Shoot.  This is a tough one.  I always come back to First-person shooters.  They are quick, fun and let me tear people apart.  It’s therapeutic.  Then there are games like Minecraft and strategy games.  With strategies, Civ 5, for example, I get too obsessed with little things.  With Civ 5 I got obsessed with getting “a good start”.  If my resources suck, my terrain is crappy, enemies find me too quickly or the enemies take too many ruins that I consider mine (which is any I reveal) then I will restart.  At one point I restarted Civ 5 so many times, on a custom-tweaked map mind you, I literally memorized all 22 civilizations that I had selected to battle against.  The things we do for love.

 

Name a game, doesn’t have to be your favorite, but has in someway influenced your life.

There are a lot of games that did this, but I would have to say the game that influenced me most powerfully was Final Fantasy 7.  That world drew me in and showed me a game that was fun and at the same time moved me to tears.  It made me laugh, made me cry and showed me people I would consider friends since I’ve explored so much with them and helped them through tough times.  I didn’t play this through the first time, but my older brother Sam would play it on his playstation.  My two younger brothers would join me and we would watch Sam play for hours like it was a movie or a t.v. show.  It was the first game that really showed me the level of artistic and story-telling genius that could exist in a game.  I was 11 when this game came out.

 

Name a game that you absolutely are done with, rage quit and just frustrates the hell out of you.

E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy.  I wrote an article about how abysmally terrible this game was.  It had overly-complex leveling systems, and I loved Sins of a Solar Empire, the most complicated space RTS ever.  Then there is a loose aggregation of what might be considered narrative elements delivered in a tossed-salad format all at once.  There was no editorial discretion paid and if there was that person should be tossed into the Pit of Carcoon.  The crafting systems made no sense, the stealth system is like being deaf and wearing metal boots.  The art was nice, but the characters were as trivial and flat as a playing card.  Everything about that game makes me viscerally angry and makes me want to smash something over my head so I can forget having to recall that the game exists.  It was that bad.  The worst part?  I fucking paid money for it!  More than nothing!

 

Name three things you think a good game should always have.

Smooth mechanics, artistic qualities that blend well into its ambiance and a solid storyline. And, If I may, guns help.  Lots and lots of delicious guns.

 

If you could be any kind of Pokemon, which would it be?

Probably a starter Pokemon, those are the ones you form the tightest bond with since they are with you from the beginning of your journey.  Most likely Froakie, because Greninja is a total badass.

 

If you were in a zombie apocalypses what would your go to weapon be? One melee and one ranged, and explain why!

OO!  I would use the machete I keep on my desk and, not to be too cliche, my long range weapon would be an M16A2.  In the army I was a damn good shot with this baby and 5.56mm ammunition is remarkably common.

 

If you could get transported into any gaming world, which would it be? Keep in mind in this world you won’t get a re spawn. Think long term =P  

Pokemon.  Kids are able to leave home at 11, travel the world until they get an idea of what they want to do in life and even then it is perfectly acceptable to stop whatever they are doing for a Pokemon battle.  Also, you have a pokemon to travel with you and experience your adventure with.  And THEN kids are encouraged to keep several close friends with them and work together.  It is honestly the coolest world ever.

 

Why do you game?

The reasons I game have changed over my life.  As a kid it was just because it was fun, but also to escape bullying as a kid.  No one really liked me and I was socially inept.  As I got older, gaming became a group activity I did with my brothers and friends and people I grew up with.  In college it was something I did to relieve tension and after I dropped out it was something I did to get away from the world.  Now, gaming is all of those things: I play for fun and friends still… but my biggest reason is to feel a connection to a larger unity.  I was exclusively a PC gamer for years and got an Xbox to be a part of that community.  I adore Steam because it connects me to peers who share my views and beliefs and have something in common, even if it is a love of gaming.

 

 

And there you have it! This guy is awesome, his mission statement is so similiar to mine which is so awesome, and the whole thing with Final Fantasy 7!! I did the same! I watched my brother play it haha. This is why it’s important to ask our fellow gamers. Because we have so much in common and we realize that the community we live in isn’t as big as you think 😉

Thank you The Crotchety Old Gamer for doing this awesome interview and thank you readers for taking the time! Much love from all of us here at Indie-Vidual Gamers, Have a dope day everyone!!!!!!!

 

http://crotchetyoldgamer.com/

^ Here’s the Link for this guys blog, it is AWESOME! check it out guys!

 

Be sure to check out our twitch channel, follow us on twitter and be on the look out for some new and awesome things! One major thing I’m working on at the moment is something called “Readers Board”  Where you the reader can submit and article to me and i’ll post it here, the article can be about ANYTHING, a rant, a love for a game, a review, anything you want =) 

 

Take it easy guys!!!!!

New Challenger : yanhipitan

Hey all,

My name is yanhipitan (real name is Ian) and I’m new here at INDIE-vidual gamers! I’m a freshman at engineering school, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that I love to write, and I love to game! While I run my own gaming website, http://www.TheWayfaringDreamer.com, in which I review games and interview game developers, here, I plan to contribute articles relevant to the gaming community. I actually do more reading about gaming than actual gaming, but when I do play, I use my Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita, although I was raised on Nintendo consoles, and they will forever hold a place in my heart. I love indie games, and I’m excited to contribute for my compatriots here at INDIE-vidual!

-Ian

I Felt Like I’ve Gone Home

In Gone Home, you play as Kaitlin Greenbriar coming home from studying abroad in Europe but your parents aren’t waiting to pick you up at the airport. That was never a problem since you already had a ride, but when you get home, no one’s there. Hello? The first thing you get is a note on the front door from your sister Sam telling you not to go looking for her. At this point I needed reassuring that Gone Home is not a horror game and, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Let’s be real though, you’re playing the game because you’ve heard people talk about it and want to find out about it for yourself. Obviously it’s not about the action so it can only be about the story and lemme tell ya hwat: the story is beautiful. It’s moving and the narrative feels like a part of The Breakfast Club’s legacy. Strewn about the house are relics actual 90’s kids can feel nostalgic about that help tell the tale of the Greenbriars. It doesn’t give away much to say that you learn why no one’s home and what happened in the year you were gone, but I think I’ve said enough for now. The fun is in the adventure.

The game in its entirety can span 4-5 hours if you’re tearing the house apart looking for clues or 1-2 hours if you already know what you need to do. Technically the game has infinite playability if you like collecting a vast array of loose items and stacking them in various arrangements. The sheer attention to detail the developers put into making the house come alive made me believe its 1995 setting and told me things like the Greenbriars were not the tidiest of families. There are few things you cannot interact with and you’re not discouraged from picking up anything and closely examining it. Once I saw a plate cabinet in the kitchen, I had to resist running through the house and putting all the plates back. For an indie project where the objective is to purely explore the house, the mechanics work perfectly fine. However, the doubt was never in the gameplay but what actually defines a game.

In the endless argument between video games and art, Gone Home breaks through the common narrative and blurs the boundaries between the two. Some indie developers attempt to do so by creating interactive experiences than actual games, citing movement input as the qualifying characteristic. While Gone Home lacks conventional gameplay action, player input is nonetheless required to interact with the environment and completing real objectives is necessary in order to advance. The conflict is not between the protagonist and an antagonist, but between your desire for closure and your ability to find it. The usual mindless action is forgone in favor of spending a day in someone else’s shoes, albeit one that is quite unusual in its circumstances. Even so, Gone Home reminds us of our experiences that inspire the titles which make up the gaming landscape.

One puzzle particularly stuck out to me because the concept was so familiar but its execution was so foreign. At the outset, Katie doesn’t have a key to her family’s new house so she has to find the spare to get in. This simple exercise familiarizes the player with skills and habits required to progress as well as the mechanics to do so which highlights the absurdity. The disconnection between the austerity of a task and the breakdown of its component actions and thoughts is exposed, reminding us to take it easy on scientists for not having successfully developed sentient A.I. yet. Rooting around for the spare key is a situation most people are familiar with but this rendering of the idea made me rethink about all the motions I go through daily. If it takes that much “work” just to find a key, imagine how a game would be where the objective is to clean a messy room, but I digress.

Gone Home is an excellent game for soap opera junkies who aren’t interested in the usual Battlefields of Duty or Leagues of Melee. The sheer repetition of picking up everything in every room in the house can be a boring chore for some but the rewards are well worth it. Exposition is slow in the beginning but quickly ramps up, earning a 7/10 but for the tedium in gameplay and the paranoia it can cause in obsessive-compulsives. More importantly, it’s worth the catharsis and a different way to look at the world.

Well Hello World

Hey guys I’m Razhyck.  I’m a college graduate and am currently looking for a job, hoping to go to grad school in the future.  People can never figure out how to pronounce my username but that’s fine cuz I never intended it to be pronounced.  I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember but I’ve learned a bit about game design as of late so I hope I can share some insights and recommendations along with the likes of wookiez277 and thebakmiester.  My childhood was full of games like Crash Bandicoot and various Marios so platformers are my bread while puzzle games are my butter with the odd RPG supplement. Gaming is something I do in the lost hours of the day and I’m usually on a computer if I have nothing else to do so gaming is practically part-time.  Anyway, I am happy to be a part of INDIE-vidual gamers and look forward to some good stuff soon.

A new challenger has arrived!

Helllooooo my fellow gamers! Today I’m proud to announce the new member of the Indie-Vidual Gamers family! Razhyck!!! <insert crowd clapping sound here>. This author is another friend of mine who I’ve known for a good time now. He’s really intelligent and very honest. He knows what he likes and doesn’t like so it’ll be fun to have some articles here that are more personalized for him. Razhyck will be mainly writing review articles along with other concept/ Opinion articles. So be sure to be on the look out for his articles and welcome him! Thanks all!

And as always! From all of us here at Indie-vidual Gamers! Have a dope day and don’t forget to heal every chance you get!

 

Don’t forget to follow us on our twitch channel @ twitch.tv/inwhat123

ALSO! Don’t forget we’ll be moving websites soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

indievidualgamers.com ^

KEEP ON GAMING GAMERS!! WACKA WACKA!!!

AND YET ANOTHER FAMILY MEMBER…Who really isn’t new…

HELLO my fellow gamers! So I just wanted to make another post announcing our editor of the blog. She has been around for awhile but I never had the chance to write a welcoming post for her. So here it is!

Fluffsicles will be editing and making sure our posts are up to par, and will correct any minor errors. She is very dedicated and awesome so we are extremely grateful to have her apart of the team! Fluffsicles won’t be writing a lot of articles, just editing and managing. Making sure everything runs smoothly. Fluffsicles will write a short about me post though and that shall be posted soon.

From all of us here at INDIE-VIDUAL gamers! Thanks for reading and see you soon!

Was Dust: An Elysian Tale Really That Good?

Dust: An Elysian Tale is an indie game made by an independent designer named Dean Dodrill (Humble Heart is the pen name) and was released in August 15^th, 2012. By the way, the Korean on the side of the title translates to “dust”. The game is a 2-D, side-scrolling, exploratory, action-adventure (all of these together summerize metroidvania) with RPG mixed in. It is available on steam and Xbox Live for $14.99. I’m mostly reviewing the combat, level design, and RPG aspects of the game. I’m not really educated in art, music, voice-acting, etc. I don’t really like criticizing something that I’m not really familiar with, so all I can says is whether or not I like it. Keep in mind I played this on tough/hard mode.

My Rating: 6/10

(0,1 points = this game shouldn’t even exist)
(2,3 points = bad)
(4 points = not really worth it)
(5 points = average)
(6 points = could have been better)
(7,8 points = good)
(9 points = I highly recommend this game)
(10 points = One of the best games that I have ever played and you’d be a damn fool to miss it)

*Note: Criterion is at the bottom

Synopsis of the story: You play a main character Dust, who has amnesia, who is trying to discover himself and save the world. He has two companions: Ahrah, who is a magical talking sword, and a nimbat named Fidget. You are trying to save a race of “people” called Moonbloods, who are anthropomorphic reptiles, from an army of Warmbloods, who are furries.

Tl;Dr/Summary: Combat wasn’t that great because you can use the same combo for the whole game. You dealt a lot of damage and you never took damage. Bosses sucked because you never had to read into the telegraphing and you could use the same combo. The RPG is pretty good. Leveling up is reasonable and your stat upgrades have good impact and are apparent. The items/crafting was pretty fun and easy too. The shops would store and restock all the materials you found throughout the game to help keep up with the recipes you find. I also enjoy the minimal backtracking. Generic platforming, so nothing too special about it. Lots of wasted potential though.

Combat: The combat is based around hacking and slashing, which is my personal favorite combat system. However, it suffers from first order optimal strategy, which basically means that you can use a few simple strategies or tactics and complete most or all of the game with them. I happened to find one overpowered attack combo very early. (SPOILER WARNING) Once you learn Dust Storm and Fidget’s first spell, all you have to do is use the spell and then use the aerial dust storm attack, while moving left and right. If you find yourself in the red or low on magic, just get back on the ground, make a few combos with your regular attack to replenish the magic and “cooldown”. Rinse then repeat (SPOILER END). Using this combo makes you invulnerable to attacks and you do a lot of area of effect damage, which can clear screens easy. There is a bit of variety with the monsters in the game, but learning their attack patterns and strategizing against them is pointless. I’m also aware that there are other high-damage, complex combos in the game, but what’s the point? Why bother when you never take damage and kill everything so efficiently with the other combo? However, there are only 2 monsters in this game where this combo becomes ineffective. There’s one called blombs and they do nothing but stop your forward momentum. After a while, you can get tanky enough to ignore them, but sitting there and waiting for them to eat your Fidget spell to die is just annoying and wastes your time. This is really not a big deal but it still bothered me a lot. The other monster is the trolk (no this is not a typo). You can’t do any real damage to it unless you parry its attacks, which at some point isn’t challenging either, because they telegraph their attacks like its their job. So, other than those two monsters, you can use the overpowered combo to kill everything else. Sadly, this includes bosses. Seriously you can use the same combat strategy for bosses and they don’t take a lot of damage either, so boss battles end within a few minutes. Boss battles in this game suck. This was seriously underwhelming and the game lost much of its flare.

The RPG: Leveling up in this game is actually fairly easy, which is one of the few things I liked in this game. No one likes spending an excruciating amount of time grinding to improve their characters. You get experience points by killing monsters and getting high hit chains, which can be easily done with the previously mentioned combo in the combat section. You can get the maximum level (60) by the end of the game without spending too much time. However, getting the maximum level is nowhere near necessary to beat it with ease. The effects of the upgrades are very apparent and it feels pretty good knowing the time and effort you put into improving yourself has a real impact in the game.

Items: Items, including healing items, are super expensive. If you end up running low on health, I recommend you just go to a previous area of the game, and farm up healing items there. You can also buy resurrection crystals if you are still having trouble. You can only find equipment in chests. The rest you have to make yourself by getting blueprints and materials that are dropped by enemies. This is also really easy to do. You can sell your materials in a shop, and they will stock any of the materials that you have sold after a few minutes throughout the game. So, you don’t have to run around the entire game getting specific drops for equipment later. This was probably my favorite part because it helped to keep you moving forward. I always found backtracking stupid and frustrating. I already completed the goddamn area. I don’t want to run back there so I can farm a bunch of shit for a dumbass item. Backtracking for special blueprints, chests, and items I can tolerate. Backtracking to farm, not so much.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: Buy the keys in the shop if you can. If you are trying to complete the game and get all the chests and friends, you have to buy the keys.

Level Design: The platforming and level design in this game is pretty standard. The movement of the game was pretty smooth and quick, other than the moments where you had to stop for the blombs and the trolks. There’s dashing, sliding, double jumping, high jumping (only when there’s wind blowing upward), and wall climbing/jumping (only with vines though). What was really cool was ascending to ridiculous heights and speeds using the aerial dust storm.  It was very smooth and you can transition into other modes of movement with it. They could have had some interesting platforming puzzles with it. But they didn’t. It was mostly used to find some secrets, chests, and keys here and there. A wasted opportunity if you ask me.

Music, story, art, etc. (SPOILERS): None of this really impressed me, but this doesn’t mean that I thought it was bad. With games like Journey, Bastion, etc, this doesn’t even come close to holding a candle to them. The voice for Ahrah was pretty good. Whenever Dust talked, he sounds like he just got out of bed and sighing. Fidget’s voice is tolerable, but it was probably because she had the best and funniest lines. She has moments when she breaks the fourth wall, but not to the point where it was obnoxious. During one of the quests, you have to collect sheep, and she makes a comment about how Dust just shoved the whole thing in his inventory. I do enjoy the use of colors in the art, but like I said, its nothing too special. The same is true for the music. The story is pretty boring. There is no real progression. You find out what’s happening in the world pretty early in the game and just details about it later. Just a bunch of racists killing people. When it comes to your identity, the only thing they tell you is that you have a relationship to the racist leading the army. No other clues are given to your identity up until the end.

Other/Personal Points: I haven’t played that many metroidvania’s, and all-in-all it wasn’t a bad game. However there are better games out there, such as Muramasa. I played Dust for about 18 hours, but some of that time was trying to achieve full completion. So for me, it was worth the price. You can play this game with either a keyboard and mouse, or with a controller, but I recommend the controller. The controls were responsive, so there’s no issue there. Here’s the big question: Would I recommend this game? Honestly, it really depends on the person. If you’ve never played metroidvania and not too fond of difficult games, this would probably be a decent one to pick up. For you completionists out there, this game isn’t that hard to complete either.

Criterion: For each section, there was a possible maximum of two points. A section will get 0 points if I feel that the mechanic or aspect was used poorly. 1 point will be given if the mechanic was used properly, but nothing special or new came out it. 2 points will be given if I feel that the mechanic made the game fun and interesting. The personal area is where the game can gain extra points if it made a good impression on me. You can choose to ignore this section if you want and just subtract one or two points the base max since some of it is subjective. However, there are some points in there that might affect your decision to play the game, such as price efficiency, controls, etc.

(Combat: 1/2)
(RPG and Items: 2/2)
(Level design: 1/2)
(Music, story, art, etc.: 1/2)
(Other/Personal Points: 1/2)

-thebakmiester

Hi I’m thebakmiester

Hi! I’m thebakmiester (im aware that its spelled wrong lol) and I’m gonna be writing some articles here and there with wookiez277. I’m currently studying to be a game designer and I’m gonna be writing mostly reviews here. These reviews are just there to help me get my thoughts on paper. Questions I ask myself when I play these games are: What made the games good/bad? Did the different mechanics of the game work together harmoniously to provide a cohesive experience, or did they do nothing to support each other? etc etc. I am by no means an expert reviewer or analyst. However, being able to analyze games might help me discover what makes a game not only good, but become an experience that might be worth talking about and sharing.  I might be able to use this information to help develop some of my own awesome (hopefully) games.

I guess a good thing to know about me is why I game? For most, gaming is just a hobby. It’s something to do while chilling or something fun to do with friends here and there. For me, gaming is a major part of who I am. Without it, I would not be the person I am today. I grew up having not many friends and video games were there to help fill the hole. I also grew up in a strict household. My parents were constantly on my back about my grades, playing piano, learning Tae Kwon Do, and doing homework for this peripheral school program. Playing video games was very liberating. I felt free. The game I played the most was Mario 64, even though my favorite of all time is Starfox 64. If you remember this game, most of you would probably remember the levels and grinding the stars to beat the game. I remember it a little differently. The freedom to choose how to beat the game is what I loved most about it. You didn’t have to get all the stars  to beat it, and you got to choose which levels and stars to get. Later on I would gravitate to playing League of Legends more. This game had a huge impact on me too. I started playing in highschool, but it really didn’t become a big deal till I got into college. I made some of my closest friends playing this game and it also brought my family closer a little bit, since the majority of my family members were gamers. My sister is even striving to be an artist for the gaming industry. With the help of video gaming and friends, I have been able to cope with depression and get through many trials of my life. As a game designer, I don’t just want to make a fun game. I want to make games that mold lives into better shapes.

The joy of streaming =)

Hellloo my felllowwwwwww gamers! So recently I posted that I started to stream, and I have to say it’s been a lot of fun. I’m still very new and my stream is extremely small, but it is something I look forward to each and every day.

But this got me thinking…

Why do I enjoy this so much? The biggest difference is that I have people who watch me and talk to me while I play the games. So is that the major quality that moves me forward, motivates me to stream more and more? YES! Of course it is! hahahahahhaHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….Ha.

There are many reason why we stream, it could be to prove something, to share an experience, to be apart of something (sound familiar? If not check out my past article titled Why Do We Game?). It could be all these reason and more but for me, it’s quite simple. I don’t feel alone.

When I stream I have people who watch and talk to me, and I talk back to them. It’s builds relationships with people I’ve never met and it’s exciting. Getting that first follow notification, the feeling of importance. That someone out there enjoys your stream and finds you entertaining. It’s a good feeling. And honestly that can go the same for this blog. When you guys write a comment, share an idea, follow my blog, I feel so honored and blessed. Honestly you guys, the viewers, the readers, the gamers, motivate me to push further and keep writing.

So from us here at Indie-Vidual Gamers I would like to say, thank you for your support and I will keep trying my best to write more and share more.

Be sure to check out the twitch channel and catch one of my streams! And most importantly, TALK! Here and on the stream, make your voice sound. It’s fun to see one of my viewers from the blogs and I really do appreciate it. SO THANKS AGAIN! And come back frequently to see what else we have in store!

http://www.twitch.tv/inwhat123

^Link to the twitch =)

You want to stream? Think it’s for you? Share your thoughts! Tell us why you think you would enjoy streaming, or if you do stream why do you think you stream, what motivates you!

 

In addition, I would like to try something new, where at the end of my posts I ask a random game related question for you guys! So here it is!

Q of da Post!

What upcoming PC games are you guys looking forward too! Why are you excited for it? Does it trigger some old memory, some new ones? What about that game makes you so excited compared to other games that are coming up. Why? WHYYYYYYY?

Comment below and share your thoughts! =) Much love all!