THE HURRICANE OF DISASTER!
you know, i've been through hurricanes, i really didn't think helene would be that bad of a storm. when i first saw that a hurricane was gonna hit, it was just called a "tropical storm" so i was like "ok lmao schools cancelled for a day then". school did get cancelled, but not for a day. it cancelled until FURTHER NOTICE. the surrounding area was practically drenched with rain, winds were yowling through the cracks in the door, ditches suddenly becoming lakes, it felt like a complete wasteland. we lost power the day of, which yeah duh, that happens in a storm. but my dumbass was like "oh the power'll come back later that day, ima just chill for now". i went and used the battery of most of my electronics before i went to bed. played some minecraft on my laptop, played higurashi and the smoke room on my steam deck, looked around on bsky, twitter, and the like. then the next day came. and there was still no power. thankfully however, the school had generators and whatnot to keep my stuff charged, and before i found out they had generators, my car did the job just fine as well. the power was only out for four days (thankfully), but even still the surrounding area still had a lot of damage that had yet to be cleared out. trees were still strewn about across many roads, many traffic lights were still out (and considering where i live, no one knows what to do when a traffic light is out), and grocery stores were all closed. it was a very weird time to, uh, exist. but i made it out fine, everything i own is intact and nothing was lost.
THE SMOKE ROOM GOT AN ENDING!
ATTENTION!This section will talk about MAJOR SPOILERS for furry visual novel, The Smoke Room. I will be talking about the most recent update of the game, which contains it's first ending. If you wish to not get any spoilers, please click here.
over the course of the hurricane, i mentioned that i played on my steam deck. during that time, i managed to finally get to where nik's route leaves off on the path i took. it was... underwhelming to say the least. so earlier in the route you're given a choice to rat out one of 6(?) people who are related to you regarding the union. i chose felipe since the choice was very obviously foreshadowing that they'd die or something like that at some time later in the story. the route continues as the main goal to mining an undiscovered gold vein that yao finds. they try to play on horror when you're in the cave where the gold is, but it always felt tacky and out of place. they literally let you see EXACTLY what the monster is surprisingly early into the story, and it isn't really a constant threat. it just felt like it was added in because "lmao its a horror novel, gotta have something spooky SOMEWHERE" when horror in the Echo series is almost always psychological. it feels like a major misjudgement on the writers side, like they only saw the socket man and was like "yeah NOW i know why it was scary" and just lazily wrote a big scary monster that's only purpose is to kill. now, eventually, you do end up mining the gold. however, theres a slight plot twist(?) where Ben just so happens to ALSO know where the gold mine is, and when he does he kills the guy he was exploring the mine with for plot(tm). The psychological horror in this scene was real good until it got ruined by the big bad monster appears again just to kill Ben and let Sam and the gang escape. Other plot stuff happened, but to keep it all short, I got to where the route was meant to be continued with the full intention of just dropping it. To say I was disappointed would be one hell of an understatement. Don't get me wrong, it has it's high points, but most of the story feels like such a slog to get through which is NOT something I could say about any other story from Echo Project. Shit would get good, only for it to be completely side swiped for more menial character interactions or thinly-veiled fan-service. I was totally just gonna use this time to just finish Higurashi, but then. out of fucking nowhere. smoke room got updated. straight from george himself, even after echo project decided to sever ties with him. i was caught extremely off guard by this because, well, how the hell did he even get permission to upload the build??? (apparently it was because he made an agreement with them where TSR would be continued by george, but ALSO have a different version being directed by a different person i think? idk the situation behind tsr is incredibly confusing and i dont have the energy to understand it.) but after the update came out (and after the power came back on), i played it. the only downside was the ending was for a completely different split in nik's route where you choose to rat out yao to porter. unfortunate, but whatever, i had to know if the ending was ass or not. and by god, holy shit, it was not ass. this was the first in the game where it felt like it earned the title of psychological horror, the descriptions of burning bodies in the mine as you try to escape the national guard is horrifying and incredibly well written. the hopelessness and dread as everything around you crumbles is written so well that i was gobsmacked, how the fuck was this the same game where most of the game is spent with the characters being vaguely attracted to Sam and making idle small talk in between big moments? and THEN, Sam manages to get out of the cave, Nik dead by his side with his attempts at saving him himself, only managing to escape because of the weird monster thing you encountered in the gold cave. the description of the surrounding area, his thoughts, his feelings is genuinely the best written stuff in the game. it was such a surprise considering the rest of game was setting this up to be a masterclass of disasterous writing. while i did really like the ending of the route, it wasn't enough to give me faith in the rest of the routes, so as of now im dropping the game and starting different visual novels. every other route just felt like a waste of time until big stuff happened, and i dont feel like wasting my time with something that i will only enjoy for very specific moments.
What's Your Status on Other Visual Novels?
well currently, i've finished Higurashi, which is something I've been working at alongside reading the smoke room. it was very good, i enjoyed it a lot! it took a bit to get to the interesting stuff, and there was definitely some fan-service that i wasn't a fan of, but i'm glad i stuck through with it until the end. i probably won't continue it though considering that all the sequels cost $7 without a sale. if they do go on sale, i'll think about it, but i just dont think the novel is for me, haha. right now i'm finally starting tavern of spear which has been an experience. the writing is very much on brand for an nsfw fvn, there are a lot of lines that just serve to make things look hot (which i mean, duh obviously, its a porn game) but some of the writing cracks me up?? like theres a shopkeep where the vn just. describes the look of his ass as he's turning around to get you some potion of something, i think most of the reason its like this for me is that there isn't any build up. there isn't any pre game with the characters (at least not yet), you just kinda ask them "hey wanna have sex?" and they're like "no lol" and then the game just makes some remarks regarding the characters features. aside from that, there's also actual gameplay in here, which is surprising to see coming from a game made in renpy. its clunky, but its something new regardless. something that i find really funny about it though is the fact that there is just a button to make you auto lose a battle. since losing a battle results in a sex scene, the dev's purposefully made a button to take you straight to it, it's actually insane and caught me way off guard the first time i tried it out. morally it is a little dubious considering, you know, there isn't any consent. i probably won't play it through to the end, but im here to just experience the madness.
NEW FURSONA IDEAS!
i made a promise last post that i would have an icon for the website by my next post. while i haven't made an icon yet (unfortunately), i have made some ideas for what i would want my sona to like! here's a look now:
meet ada! (he/she)
i really wanted it to be a dragon since reptiles are my favorite kind of animals, on top of inspiration i've gotten from other dragon-sonas. these aren't final and are only just concepts but having a non-chalant, chill as hell dragon who looks like she smokes weed would be a peak design. definitely would need to make his head more rectangular instead of just using circles for the head, as well as just working out the spatial stuff with her head, i.e. how his snout would look at different angles n whatnot. i hope to draw her more within the coming week, since i do want to add an icon to give this icon more personality. (maybe i'll get a commission done at some point soon in the distant future...).
CONCLUSION
ahhh!!! sorry this came out so late!! i got pretty lazy with the development of this, i probably need to plan some stuff and make a timeline for some of the things i want to do with this website. surprise, wanting to get a post out every week, completely change the look of the blog, add a new gimmick to the site, among other random ideas that i think of does not make me very motivated to do stuff and INSTEAD makes me incredibly confused on what to do. i doubt that there will be this long of a timespan between posts, but i wouldn't say it couldn't happen again ;3c. thank you for reading, and i'll see you next week hopefully!