There is plenty of things that make me feel many emotions and that I hold close to my heart so I'll try to go over them in topics
GamesConsidering I wanna be a game designer video games are one of my biggest passions, sitting down and being able to just work your way through a new world, learning new things, new experiences, it's like being in a spaceship and exploring planets each with their rules, challanges and soul, so here goes some games I enjoy a lot!
Here of all palces I treasure exploration and discovering new things so I'll avoid talking about the most famous ones like hollow knight, portal and such, unless they mean a lot to me, but enough delaying.
Despotism 3KDespotism 3K is a resource management game, it takes place somewhere in the year 3000 and you play as Despot, an A.I./Robot thing that uses humans to power itself and stay alive. Events will change the gameplay from a little to a lot and you'll have to strategise around them, or if you're smart even use them as an advantage. It's very tight so you don't have much room for error and your results are very dependable on choices from a while ago. So if you like thinking "Okay how can I possibly make this as optimized as possible" but also a rogue-like run style (and by the way a ton of humor and references to other media) then you might want to check it out!
Nuclear ThroneNuclear Throne, a toxic wasteland where you shoot your way through desert bandits, vendicator birds and giant robots, collecting their radiation to mutate yourself so you can finally reach and sit on the nuclear throne and be the king of the wasteland. There are 12 characters to choose, each with an unique active and passive ability, you unlock them through progressing on the game and experimenting with the world's elements. The world of the game feels very alive, each enemy in their own areas having telling a bit about the world with not a single line of dialogue, there's also the police that hunts you down the closer you get to the throne. The runs are fairly short, taking at most 15 minutes, so if you want some action without having to sit down for hours just to finish a run then you might want to check it out!
Bloons TD 6It's unlikely you haven't heard of this game, if not this one then other ones in the franchise. A staple in the tower defense genre, Bloons comes with a ridiculous premise of, baloons or "Bloons" are your enemy because yes, they vow to go through a path and if they reach the end you lose. Your response to that? Pop them... With monkeys, because why the hell not? You place monkeys down that have different weaponary like darts, boomearangs or tacks, but the bloons get stronger and faster! So slowly things start getting ridiculous, there are lead bloons, so in comes the sniper monkey, cammo bloons, throw a ninja monkey, ceramic bloons, monkey submarine, a god damn Massive Ornary Air Blimp aka M.O.A.B. full off bloons inside, a Super Monkey that throws darts at an incredible speed and can eventually sacrifice other monkeys around itself to make itself stronger evolving into the Sun God!
Besides its ridiculus and genius presentation, It's also a great tower defense strategy game. Every monkey has 3 lanes of abilities that each has 5 levels to evolve, and each individual monkey can have a main lane which you can go up to level 5, and a secondary one, that goes up to level 2. Not only do you have multiple paths you can evolve your monkey but also you need to decide which paths to go all the way through and which to leave behind. With many bloon types some abilities are crucial and not all monkeys have the ability to pop all bloons and such. Some even have very specific abilities that might seem useless on some levels but completely game changers in other situations. My most recent example of this is with the ice monkey, a tower I would use here and there but not much overall, but when I got to a level with a lot of water only water monkeys like ship and submarine can be placed on water but they cannot be placed on land where I could really use a land monkey being somewhere there is water, I found out the lvl 3 abilitiy on ice monkey's middle lane makes it freeze water around it so you can place land monkeys on it! How sick is that?
I spent hours on the previous game which you can play on steam for free btw, on ninja kiwi archive playing levels trying to get all 4 medals on each up to very recenlty, so when I found out there were 14 medals for each level on the sequel I was sent on a fucking mission. For the past couple months I've been playing each level trying to get all medals, which is kinda time consuming, I got 160 hours as of writing and I don't doubt it'll become my most played game on steam, but playing the levels like this has been a lot of fun, going through the levels on standard mode being a small but quick skill test followed by going through the challenges which make up a slower but tougher challenge run, which culminates on the hardest test of strategy skills on this game, called C.H.I.M.P.S mode.
Each letter represent something you have little to no access to, those being:
C - Continues, you can't spent monkey cash to regain health and money and try again.
H - Hearts, you only have 1 heart.
I - Income, any means of income other than popping bloons and finishing a round do not work.
M - Monkey Knowledge, none of the perks gained through the knowledge tree work in this mode.
P - Powers, you can't use powers or insta monkeys, which I consider cheating.
S - Selling, once you put a monkey down it will be there until the sun explodes.
When I saw bloons 6 for the first time I had a nagging feeling it became a pay to win, I heard of powers and the hero monkey and thought welp, I could try my hardest and someone with infinite money could just win just as much as me, not just that but I myself could fall for the temptation and not earn any of my achievements... But when i saw that HOLY SHIT did my scratch my completionist itch so good.
But you don't need to try and play on hardcore to have a nice time, one of the great things about it is that through the dificulties you can have as chill or as tense of an experience as you want! It also has an online coop mode, so if you're into tower defense or strategy games, from a curiosity to a deep passion, I think it's worth it to check it out!
Bloons 5's OST is so much better tho, that's fact.
It's getting closer
MusicMy taste in music can be considered... odd, to some people, specially to those from my day to day life, but it's something that's a crucial part of my life, so here follows some of the stuff I listen to.
North American AdonisThis is a "triple album", made by Doseone, Buck 65 and Jel. I had never previously heard Buck 65 or Jel but I'm quite familiar with dosone, being one of my favorite rappers, so I'll mostly talk about him rather than the other two. From the very title and album cover it's obvious this is a commentary on North American culture, however, since I'm Brazilian I'm sure a lot of the symbolism and references will fly over my head, so I won't dive too into that. What interests me instead is the whole vibe of the album, in between songs you get these static noises aswell as snippets of people talking and sounds, with even a couple of tracks being a "remix" of what I guess is old commentary reccordings, it's like you're tuning into the radio to find some worthwhile trash, and oh boy it is worthwile, it has its' ups and downs of "energy" like most albums, some songs being hard hitting and fast, while others being slow, but each with their own flair. Given the static in between songs it's not odd at all just hitting the album on shuffle on repeat listens, if you ignore an introduction song like three quarters of the way through the album.
If I were to point out all the cool things I like about each song I'd be here for a long ass time but what usually comes to mind first is "Alive in a Landfil", from all songs I feel like it's the one that captures greatly the feeling of trash that the album seems to go for, I honestly can't tell shit what doesone's says on his word salad half of the song but it sounds so rad in his extremely rough way.
A song that has a similar feeling but it's much more funky or jazzy or whatever it is I'm not well versed in music talk is "Men", besides the comments on masculinity, which again, I'm sure some of it went over my head, this song is just so god damn fun to listen to, the back and forth between Buck and Dose flows really well and I can't not feel my body wanting to move on it's own.
Another song that sticks out to me is "Back Back Forth Forth" and not just the song part but the whole intro for some reason, the little jingle at the very start and the sounds through it gives an air of eerieness that I can't help but get invested on. Besides that the rest of the song rocks, the BACK BACK FORTH FORTH ADONIS AMERICAN NORTH hits really hard, it feels like a violent invasion of your brain which reagardless if intentional or not is insane.
The slower songs are nice, I wouldn't call it filler but I wouldn't call it great either, it's a downtime between those hard hitting ones so your head can have a breather. Out of those, I really enjoy "Flat Bastard", the comentary itself is nice and the "sounds" are cool, I can't really explain it, it just works with the vibe. My only criticism if you can call it that is that a lot of them are very short, like "Kill or be Killed", once you think there's still a bit to go it's pratically over, but that doesn't stop them from being enjoyable still.
I wouldn't recomend this for most people, it's really hit or miss, you're either going to think it's awesome or abnoxious, but as most gems that's how things usually go. But regardless, if I interested you, check it out!
Kingdom Two Crowns (Original Soundtrack)Calmness is the word I think best describes this, it's entierly instrumental, and uses a lot of keyboard and flutes, aswell as strings in some tracks.
Simmilarl as to some moments of the game it originates from, this series of tracks unearthen on me a deep desire to simply exist, a form of meditation. It makes anything and everything feel like its own capsulated moment in time, like you are allowed, if not encouraged to just enjoy the moment, feel the air that surrounds you, look at the stillness of things that are around you and feel their patience, feel their peace.
It is a personal dream of mine in a way, to be able to listen to this while walking in some woods, somewhere around spring or maybe autumn, completely feel the ground beneath my feet with each step, and have not a single ounce of rush, of anxiety, taking things as slowly as desired, for there is no need to rush, there is no limit to my time spent there, I could spend hours just observing the plants moving with the wind, water flowing through a creak, examin an insect as it follows its behaviour and its organically-mechanical body moving the only ways it can. Proceeding as my body desires, stopping when my attention is caught, moving when body wishes, savoring a single piece of snack, a token of time, infinitely immortalized by that moment of appreciation.
I'd like to take a moment to point out some tracks, and if you're able to, I'd hope you take a moment to listen to at least one of these:
- Skipping Stone
- A Tired Ghost
- Driftwood
- Beneath Fog
There is nothing specific about these tracks other than I really enjoy them. But an exception to the whole album is "Blood Moon", it's the only song that the feeling intended is fear, nod towards a feeling of unease, a chill in your body before a great evil come.
I would recomend this for some sort of meditation, wanderings of both the physical and the mental. I've fallen asleep to this track a couple of times and maybe if you'd want to too you can check it out!
YoutubeI, like a lot of people, have youtube in my life as the source of most of the media I consume, it has plenty to offer and all you need is an internet connection and an adblock and you have access to so much different stuff. I mostly listen to video essays, usually while doing something else, either work or dying on nuclear throne, but it's not rare when I move to watch somethin else entierly, so here follows some stuff I watch and think others might enjoy too aswell as my thoughts on them.
Super Eyepatch WolfSuper eyepatch wolf is by no means a small channel, hell the guy has almost 2 million subscribers, but there's something more to his videos.. All that people have a reason to be there after all.
My experience with this channel started very rocky, in fact I actively avoided it for a good while. With that name, and that profile image? It didn't strike me as that interesting, reminded me of ninja of all things. And I noticed some videos here and there, his titles sounded interesting, but still, I still wasn't sure if it was worth my time.
I couldn't tell you when that shifted, what was the first video I watched of his and honestly for what I'm trying to do here it doesn't matter. What matters is that this guy, this guy can make any topic seem like a psychological horrific scenario in a cosmical scale, the way he describes things, how he seamlessly weaves this disturbing facture into the narrative, and it's all so natural, like he's taking anything that is the topic of the video and unraveling it layer by layer, slowly tearing it open until you see what's at the most essence of its existence, and it so often is something that twists minds, something so giant you pale in comparisson.
One of his videos that is a personal favorite of mine is "Horror in Impossible Places", the opening is so well crafted that after over 6 months from seeing it once I could remember all beats of it and I recomend you go check it out for yourself as any attempt to do it justice would be doomed to fail, and that goes for any moment I discuss here.
Another reason why I take this title in specific to heart is that as it neared its last part of runtime it mentioned something that I couldn't help but check for myself, a book called House of Leaves a book so twisted in its presentation, so insane in its premise that I couldn't listen on further, I bought the book and like the video I hold it so close to my heart, the biggest book I have ever read and such a fun one at that, and what both the book and this video captures is a very specific feeling I don't get from anywhere else, I rarely hear it from people online and its a barren wasteland in real life, I finished reading the book after almost a year from when I started watching that video the first time, and I only finished watching after I read the book.
But another video of his that to me has a moment that hits like a truck is "What IS Nathan Fielder?" where he's talking about reality, even though right now he is talking to you, he's not, he's never been, he's talking to a camera, anything he says can be a lie, but you trust him, and in a few moments, he shows how as he was telling you that he can twist reality and lie to you, during it, he was lying, and you bought it. He was pointing a gun at you telling he could kill you and your mind pulled the grigger for him.
"Influencer Courses are Garbage: The Dark Side of Content Creation"All of the ones I listed before and those I did just now are a few of the videos that give those feelings that so few things in life can. If you have time to watch, or maybe even to just listen if watching isn't an option for you, I urge you to reach to the edge of reality, pull on that flap and stare at the bizarre reality of the world that surrounds you
and check it out!
Alien BiosphereRather than a youtube channel, this is an ongoing youtube series, made by the channel Biblaridion. If you like world making, specially on the language department you should definitely give his videos a try.
This video series came to me in a common but odd way, I was bored during online class and stumbled upon what I think was the second or third video's thumbnail, some very very odd creature-shapes, for lack of a better term, on a blank white background. It was supposed to be merely background audio for me, something to listen to and eventually glance at, but almost instantly it ascended from that.
I couldn't keep my attention from it, not that it was anything specially attention grabbing, but just from how sheer interesting it was. A theoretical evolution of species in an alien plannet, very detailed, going all the way from the barebones primordial living creatures to fully fledged complex animals and alike. The graphics weren't insane, but they were more than enough to entice imagination, it felt like the greatest book on evolution I had never seen, without any reading required! As a kid, and still now but not as much, I was very interested in biology, in systems in general, understanding how things work, learning about evolution was one of the first ways that I got the feeling that makes me look at our world with stars in my eyes, so tight, infaluable, and it explains so incredibly much! And this series does an awesome job on ignighting that.
Simulation is a great way of explaining something, while theory isn't as good as practice, with concepts like evolution it's hard to grasp them since there seldom is practical examples of it, so a series like this is awesome in insane volumes for being a tangible simulation of evolution. It shows concepts one at a time, both things that you might know aswell as not, since its basis is our real world, it's inevitable that you'd learn things from our world from watching it, seeing conepts that you know being applied on this fictional world, or new concepts that are explained by things in our world, I just can't get enough of it, it's great!
While with time, grasping the world and its creatures gets harder, since more creatures are introduced with every instalment and the previous ones are caught by natural extinction most of the time it slowly becomes less aobut the creatures themselves and more about the concepts being applied, every episode showing new scenarios, habitats, the restrictions of nature and evolutionary concequences that come with them.
It's currently at 14 episodes, they start shorter, about 20 minutes, but very quickly pick up in length, the latest one being close to an hour and 20 minutes long! If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is, but if any of what I said just now sounds interesting to you in any way, I highly recomend you to give it a try. If you're still unsure, watch the second episode the first one is not integral to enjoying the series but it's good for understanding how some things happen and if somehow by the end of it you're not hooked, you can go ahead and do something else, but in the ladder scenario, you're going to love to check it out!
Real Card WarsYou know card wars? Yeah the one from adventure time. Man that always looked so cool and fun to me as a kid, pretty much everyone that saw it as a kid wanted to play it irl as far as I'm aware, I remember seeing a physical version in a toy store once but never again, there was also a mobile game but it was very different than what it is in the show. Oh well, I guess it'll just stay in our minds as a childhood dream until someones decides to do something about it... Wait... Whats that?
A guy on youtube, BigHoles, started a dev series a few weeks back and he's doing a great job. He's trying to make a show-accurate version using as much info as he can to put on his prototype while taking as little liberties as possible and trying to make something coheesive and playable, which is honestly the best approach for something like this in my opinion.
It seems to have somewhat weekly updates, which is pretty fast for something like this. If you're into game design in any way I highly recomend you check it out. Many years ago I tried my hand at something like this but it definitely didn't work out from my lack of experience. I got the feeling of trying again but not super sure how it'll turn out.
There are many videos but they're fairly short, so if you're into card games at all I recomend you check it out!
I always got a ton of stuff to talk about but I never know where to go next '^^, so if you got any questoins you can mail me here: bruno.rubim924@gmail.com