PixlBit

So far this March I've finally fired up the HD version of Beyond Good & Evil that's been sitting on my Xbox's hard drive for months untouched, I also finished Dean Dodrill's Dust: An Elysian Tail, I became a Spelunky master, and built a metal-ass church in the city I've been constructing in Minecraft.

Beyond Good & Evil HD

Tami recommended me to play this game a long time ago because I love lighthouses and she said the main character lives in a lighthouse. I'm a few hours deep and I like the personality the game has going for it. It definitely plays like a 2003 game and has been fairly rotten in the level design, camera, and boring combat, but I really love the stealth, the picture taking, and the colorful world that they realized in the game. The boat racing is kind of fun too, even though it's super easy and without nuance, it's been fun. I like this game so I'll see it through to the end.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

I got this on sale, got addicted to it, and finished it within a few days. I loved the combat, the artwork, the story, and how the story came to a close. The writing was too on-the-nose in a number of places, especially during exchanges between Dust and his companion Fidgit, but the overall story was still strong. The narrative was surprisingly dark and it came across as intensely personal. The big story beats were more often than not handled well when it mattered most, and got plenty of emotion and empathy out of me.

The platforming was by far the weakest part of the game and the only part that regularly frustrated me. Sometimes it was trying to be too clever for its own good, trying to inject hints of Spelunky and Super Meat Boy flavor (the game shows a lot of love to those games through its collectibles) except without any of the tight controls and precision those game have. The combat, story, and aesthetic were where it shined. I've never played a game that looks quite like it, Dust is gorgeous and always interesting to look at. The combat is fast, the effects and animation are super satisfying, and the combination of basic attacks, storm attacks, and a small list of combos all build a relatively simple combat system but it's executed well and offers a very satisfying flow of action during battles. There's also the part where this beautifully realized and fairly lengthy game was written, designed, and programmed almost entirely by one person. Bravo, Mr. Dodrill. Your passion project turned out to be a stunning game.

Spelunky

Yep, my favorite game in the world is still making appearances in every one of my blogs, but every time I update you I've usually accomplished something in the game. This time I finally reached the top of the mountain and beat all of Spelunky, meaning I survived the secret Hell world and killed the secret boss Yama. Not once but twice so far, and each time I've set new personal records for loot collected. The last time I beat Yama was last night and I finished the game with $510,000, earning the achievement for getting over $500k in one run. I started playing Spelunky 3 months ago and I still remember all the milestones it took to get to Yama. It took 2 weeks for me to finally get out of the Mines (the 1st world). With each new world I met new challenges and unique difficulty spikes that seemed absurd and impassable at the time. Now I sit on top of Yama's corpse with half a million virtual dollars in my loot sack.

Minecraft

Last year I started building a small city with a large castle-wall surrounding it. The project has changed repeatedly and I've destroyed the whole thing a few times with TNT out of frustration only to build it back up with new ideas. I've settled on a certain concept that I'm fond of and am currently fleshing it out.

In the center of my city I built a monolithic birch tree (think Deku Tree but taller) that reaches up to the cloud layer. It's the focal point for most of the world and can be seen from far outside the city. The base of the tree was carved into four large columns that straddle a river running between them. There are vines growing all around the tree and many are placed at the base so that you can climb up them and into the tree. The insides of the tree are hollowed out from top to bottom. There's a small waterfall running from the top of the tree and exits the bottom into the river that the tree straddles. You can walk in a large circle around the waterfall, look up to see higher levels, climb ladders and stairs to reach hallways and variety of rooms in the largest branches, and eventually reach the top of the tree. At the highest point, the tree has a rain-catch basin full of water, as well as irrigation that leads to tree-top gardens built on the highest branches. When you're that high up, the walls of the castle look modest and inconsequential by comparison; the whole city is dwarfed by the height of the tree.

Right now I'm building the structures of the city around the tree and I have a loose narrative in mind that explains a conflict brewing within the city, and the history of the tree. Each sector of the city has places built a certain way, and written signs (some in plain sight and others hidden) act as a way for me to tell a little backstory. There's a church I made yesterday that is called the Church of Steel and it's metal as shit. It's built from blocks of stone and iron, and inside the church is a huge pillar of iron rising out of a pool of lava and obsidian blocks. There are signs around the building and inside that say things like, "COME PRAY BEFORE THE TOWER OF STEEL AND THANK THE MOUNTAIN" then inside you get a little back story like, "INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN THEY FOUND IRON AND MOLTEN EARTH. INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN THEY MADE STEEL. WITH STEEL THEY BROKE THEIR ENEMIES. WITH STEEL THEY MADE A NEW LIFE." You can creep around to some lightly hidden areas and find signs that say, "THEY MADE THE WORLD THAT THEY WANTED TO SEE" and, "WITH STEEL THE TREE WAS MADE INTO THE MARVEL IT IS TODAY"

I can't possibly explain all this in little Minecraft messages so I'll do it here. In my imagination the conflict in the city is between the Church of Steel and a small group within the church who are claiming that their ancestors are guilty of an ancient genocide, of killing the Tree, and that although their carving of the Tree was an engineering marvel it destroyed its magic and over time the region is turning to desert and they must evacuate to start from scratch, which to the Church of Steel means leaving the mountain, leaving the great tree they fashioned, and amounts to a certain level of blasphemy and cowardice.

Long ago the Great Tree was un-carved, the world around it prospered, and a small community of natives known as the Ender lived off the land around the tree. The ancestors of the Men of Steel were a migratory band of hunters and craftsmen known as the Rane, and during a migration they came upon the great tree, befriended the Ender, and learned a great deal about the boon of resources around the tree. For years the two factions maintained an uneasy alliance protecting the tree and exploring the surrounding lands. The Ender stressed the existence of magic within the Tree and the need to keep the land whole, but the ambitions of the Rane led them to begin mining the nearby mountain. Inside, the Rane found copious amounts of iron and they learned to make steel.

With steel they became brazen and more willing to muscle the natives around during council meetings. Shortly after their discovery of steel, the Rane were mining deep into the mountain when their men found a portal to a Netherworld which released zombies and pigmen into the realm, a fact they immediatly wanted to keep secret from the Ender for fear of war with their ally. The warriors and hunters of the Rane began voyaging into the Netherworld to assault the monster strongholds but were loosing all their battles. To fuel their hidden war, the Rane were harvesting more lumber, iron, and food animals than ever before, and the Ender leadership warned them to stop stripping the land bare or face a war to put the Rane ambition in check. With a secret war in the Netherworld they were badly loosing, and a seemingly impending war with their ally the Ender, the Rane were desperate and looking for an answer.

One dark early morning there was an incident around the Great Tree. A lone craftsman from the Rane took his axe to the Great Tree, cutting out a small tunnel to the center of the trunk. At the sounds of the chopping, a few Ender eventually awoke and investigated the source, only to find the horror of the Great Tree being carved. They cried out to the man inside, and soon the lone Rane craftsman came back out from the tunnel he had chopped. When he appeared, his steel was clutched tightly in his hand, his eyes were alight with frenzy, and he began claiming that he had already reached the center of the tree and there wasn't yet a sore muscle in his body. He began emphatically spilling secrets to this small tired group of Ender about how being inside the Tree gave him the energy of a thunderstorm, and that with this newfound power the Rane would finally be able to turn the tide against the monsters in the Netherworld.

Horrified that the Great Tree had been defiled and that the Rane had found the Netherworld and unleashed monsters into the world, the Enders at the incident cried that all of the madness had to stop and the destructive powers of both the Rane and the Netherworld monsters needed to be put in check. The Enders turned to run and warn their leader, but in that moment the lone Rane craftsman raised his steel and slew them all with a speed and ferocity never seen before. He then ran to tell the other Rane about the powers of the Tree and the deaths of the Enders at the Tree. The leaders of the Rane agreed that their war in the Netherworld could now turn around, and the conflict with the Ender could no longer be avoided. In the early dawn light, all the Rane warriors who weren't currently dying in the Netherworld suited up for war and marched to the Great Tree to enter and recieve the thunder the craftsman claimed he felt. Each warrior that ventured to the center of the Tree came back out running with steel in hand, fury in their eyes, and poured throughout the city killing all Ender in their path.

By noon all the Ender in the vicinity lay slain and the soils of the city around the Great Tree were soaked in blood. With the Ender out of the picture, the Rane tasked a group of craftsmen with carving out more of the Tree while the rest of the Rane prepared for a full scale invasion of the Netherworld to alleviate their brethren who were dying at the hands of the zombies and pigmen.

Within a month the Ender in the surrounding lands had all but been eradicated and buried, the Great Tree was nearly hollowed out and construction of rooms where noble Rane could study and train began. Within the month the monsters of the Netherworld were on the run and their fortresses reduced to rubble, and the Rane's ambition and desperation ended with total victory. Some years later a group of Rane founded the Church of Steel with the intention of making sure future generations of Rane learned of the bounties that the mountain gave them. The iron, molten Earth, and most of all, steel. They taught their descendents that through steel they broke their enemies, and with steel they both saved their way of life and turned the Tree into the artistic and engineering marvel it is today. The Rane began calling themselves Men of Steel.

In the present day the lands are turning to desert, the magic of the Tree has long since drained, and the Men of Steel are no longer super-charged and unstoppable. From the mountain, the monsters of the Netherworld are beginning to reappear once more. The dissenting members of the Church of Steel are uncovering the truths of the ancient conflicts, and of the fact that the Tree gave them great power that dwindled away long ago, and their victories weren't entirely because of the steel of the mountain alone. They warn their fellow Men of Steel that their ancient enemies from the Netherworld are returning and they have no chance of stopping them this time. The city and the entire region are doomed to fall to drought and Netherworld monsters, and this once powerful city built on steel and blood must return to its all but forgotten migratory roots as the Rane. A return to a life none of the living Men of Steel ever knew, a life long before their ancestors came upon the Great Tree, or the Enders.

I like that story. It's metal as fuck and it's dumb, but it's cool.

COME PRAY BEFORE THE TOWER OF STEEL