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Snowflake Challenge #5 (2021)
Jan. 21st, 2021 05:11 pmIn your own space, promote a canon/talk about a part of canon that you love.
I was going to write about the gorgeous Epistory: Typing Chronicles, but I think that I'm going to talk about something that's a favorite part of several video game canons that I've been enjoying over the last year or so. My "favorite part of canon", you might say.
With all the death and dying this last year, I've taken comfort in a set of video games: Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, Slime Rancher, and Epistory: Typing Chronicles. These at first seem like three of one thing and one of another (three are farming/crafting games and the fourth is a typing game), but they have one thing in common. That thing is that you don't get kicked to a game over/title screen when you die.
In Stardew Valley, when you've been knocked out in the mines, someone finds you. You lose some stuff, but that's better than having to restart. In Portia, you can jump down cliffs, walk across (very shallow) water, and if you run out of health? You end up back home most of the time with all your stuff. Get knocked out by aggressive slimes or fall into the water in Slime Rancher? Wake up the next morning (or so) minus your carried inventory. Epistory? The narrator makes a comment and then you're back at the place you were before you lost.
There are other games I play that have no death - such as House Flipper and various visual novels - but these are games that have RPG elements of one kind or another. I might have to travel back to what I got before, and I might have lost some or all of my inventory, but it's a more gentle failure of sorts. I might be a slight bit inconvenienced, but I don't feel like I'm starting from scratch. I don't get frustrated.
It's comforting, and the last year made me realize how much I needed that kind of thing at times. It's fairly soft and sweet, and something that I turn to when I need a break from the world.
I was going to write about the gorgeous Epistory: Typing Chronicles, but I think that I'm going to talk about something that's a favorite part of several video game canons that I've been enjoying over the last year or so. My "favorite part of canon", you might say.
With all the death and dying this last year, I've taken comfort in a set of video games: Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, Slime Rancher, and Epistory: Typing Chronicles. These at first seem like three of one thing and one of another (three are farming/crafting games and the fourth is a typing game), but they have one thing in common. That thing is that you don't get kicked to a game over/title screen when you die.
In Stardew Valley, when you've been knocked out in the mines, someone finds you. You lose some stuff, but that's better than having to restart. In Portia, you can jump down cliffs, walk across (very shallow) water, and if you run out of health? You end up back home most of the time with all your stuff. Get knocked out by aggressive slimes or fall into the water in Slime Rancher? Wake up the next morning (or so) minus your carried inventory. Epistory? The narrator makes a comment and then you're back at the place you were before you lost.
There are other games I play that have no death - such as House Flipper and various visual novels - but these are games that have RPG elements of one kind or another. I might have to travel back to what I got before, and I might have lost some or all of my inventory, but it's a more gentle failure of sorts. I might be a slight bit inconvenienced, but I don't feel like I'm starting from scratch. I don't get frustrated.
It's comforting, and the last year made me realize how much I needed that kind of thing at times. It's fairly soft and sweet, and something that I turn to when I need a break from the world.
