joe mama

 if this blog becomes active again it's because tumblr premium was the fuckin death knell for microblogging platforms lol

seventy bucks a year so you can upload 10 minute videos LMAO tumblr staff have lost their goddamn fucking minds.

and now, for something completely different.

And that something completely different, you may ask?

 

A review.

That's right, I'm going there today.

 

Because I'm righting the utter injustice that is little me being unable to figure out how to play Story of the Blanks for years and thinking it got scarier than it does because that's how everyone billed the game back then. 

 

The best creepy MLP game you'd ever find.

 

Or at least better than whatever the hell Luna Game was doing, in the corner picking its nose and generally being the weirdo in the room that we'd rather not talk about.

Hell, EQGaming has a very favourable review - it won their creepypasta game contest (which it was created as a submission for)

 

So why am I talking about it like it sucks?

Because, no offense... it kind of does, when you play it.

So what the hell is the game?

You start off playing as Applebloom, following Twilight Sparkle into the Everfree Forest as she runs some errand for Zecora. As you two leave, she warns you about hurrying back to Ponyville, the night is untrustworthy... yadda yadda... and some trees fall. Twilight goes to clear them... and this is when the game starts for real. Waiting around for her to clear the trees won't work - so you walk away, spotting a pony. This is Ruby - she's important later. For right now, though - you just chase her, into a town called "Sunny Town", where you are greeted by a stallion named Grey Hoof.

there's only one screenshot because that's what i snagged for discord

You talk to ponies, there's this guy, Roneo, who wants to give this chick, Starlet, a gift, so you find it for him, and after that pointless quest (i'm serious they're just there for a cute quest to... leave you unsuspecting of anything, I guess.), there's more chasing down Ruby, and you wind up at her house... with a locked door and a shiny something in a well. There's a puzzle, just one, in an open house - there's two things at the end, a crank handle (for the well) and a pony you can talk to. She says something about how "it's not right, the same thing over and over again". Anyways, so you trek back to Ruby's place, get the shiny something from the well (it's a key), unlock her door, and... there's nothing inside. You go interact with the only interactable object in the room, a fireplace - and the fire goes out. First sign this town isn't what it seems, a creature dialogue box pops up. No text. Applebloom goes "no no no no!" in a panic as something presumably draws near - there's no audio save for a dragging sound.

Nothing attacks you if you wait, though, so don't worry.

So, leaving the house and getting back into Sunny Town, it's dark. Dark, and more of those creatures from the text box are there. They're chasing you now. Grey Hoof yells that he "had to, she was going to spoil the party". Three Leaf appears from the ground, tells you that a "curse had befallen her" - curse in question being Ruby's cutie mark. Simple little maze, made harder by two creatures - Gladstone, and this unnamed one that I think is supposed to be Grey Hoof? who goes really fast. You're gonna get caught by him a few times if you don't know what you're doing. That stops being scary after like the second catch.

 

Anyways, you run through the maze that is now Sunny Town, meet Mita or whatever her name was at the exit, who gives you some shtick about how "even in death, they never learn" - implying that I guess these are ponies who died as fillies and colts in the forest, who never earned their cutie marks but live on as ghost adults, and they view cutie marks as bad, probably out of jealousy or something - also it was their fate to be trapped or something. She tells you to run for your life.

 

So you run through Everfree (with creatures spawning), it's pretty easy - then you meet up with Ruby. Turns out she's good at finding things and got a cutie mark. She tells you about that, then is all "and i will find you a way out of this!" - did I mention the two of you are surrounded by creatures? Then Twilight-goddamned-motherfucking-plot-device-for-an-anticlimactic-ending-Sparkle comes to light up the forest and save the day - Ruby and the creatures are gone.

She leaves the forest with you, and just as you walk offscreen with her, it pans up to the entrance to Everfree, with Ruby saying "goodbye, friends.".

 

 

 

 

So what the hell is the problem with this game?

 

 Well, for starters - it's boring as fuck. You follow a chick, get to a cute town, do one quest, and then scary shit happens. Or something. It's basic as fuck - even the first Super Mario Bros. has more to do and that was an actual NES game. But I could excuse that if the game's story didn't have that shitty sappy ending all creepypastas seem to have. Maybe I'm biased, spoiled off of whatever shitty r/nosleep offerings, but the "day is saved, ruby sends you off with a smile" ending is stupid. Have the nerve to pull a Luna Game and kill your protagonist with a jumpscare - sure, it'd be cheesy, but that'd be scarier than the entirety of the second half of this fucking game.

The problem with that second half and that ending is that, as stated at the beginning of this post, I remember this game being billed as far scarier when I was younger, but... it isn't. It's not half as scary as loser neckbeards on the internet would have had you think back then.

 

The first chase segment, within Sunny Town, is a little nerve-wracking at first, when you get to the end with the one who moves super fast, and you're like "wtf is that?!", but after you're caught a couple times it gets a little meh... plus it's really easy to get through the chase scene once you're in the rest of Everfree, just keep moving, don't wait for them to finish their spawning animation. Didn't get caught once when I was in there.

 

However, I think this game's main issue is trying to be different from other creepypasta-style games. That, and having a full soundtrack through everything - it just feels like a regular game and not like a spooky haunted game when you have music throughout everything.

 

If the chase sequence had the music cut out when it began and had nothing save for the sound of the creatures walking (or had the initial Sunny Town music playing throughout, completely unfitting of the actual scene in front of you, hell even a distorted version of Sunny Town's song would be passable) then I think it'd be scarier - but as it stands? This just feels like a short fanmade RPG with no battles and a scary/intense sequence at the end.

 

And like, I get that creepy games having no music (or music that cuts out) is a cliche, and back then, even more so, but... this is one of those times when something would benefit from having a cliche. make it more obvious that things aren't right when the scary stuff starts up - if you can cut the music in Ruby's house for creepy sounds to play, you can sure as hell do that once you hit the meat of the game and things start chasing you as well. And I get that they were going for a proper story rather than just "Oh, My Little Pony NES game! Oh, scary stuff is happening!" but maybe not every story has to have  happy ending? Nor an ambiguous one.

And the death screen should have been a little scarier, but that's a minor nitpick.

So yeah. That's it. That's what I'm doing differently here on my blog. I'm reviewing an ancient flash game that nobody gives a fucking shit about.

Feel free to smash your keyboards and froth at me having the wrong opinion on your favourite fangame involving those little technicolour horsies, I guess.

I can take it.

After all, I've already experienced far, far worse.

Well, that's it for this one.

See you guys next year, hope things finally start working out again in this hell world.

Or something like that.

-Lance Eridian Nirhari Gardenia.

pay typo au

 expect several posts with that title because i'm obsessed and uncreative

 

 

 

i'm finally signing my work again - albeit, only because this was posted to tumblr.

 

 

yep, this post is actually a shameless plug for a tumblr askblog i'm trying to get going.

 

you can find it here at https://ask-pay-typo-au-i-guess.tumblr.com/

 

 

 

 

 

see you later... or something.

-Lance Gardenia

p.s: i'm having that weird problem where i'm not eating again. i try for real food but i just gag on it. i'm not even upset this time around i think my subconcious just hates me - wonder why that is, lmao- thankfully though i can get my snacks down, so i'll just be eating those until my stupid brain decides that food is good again... i might need some pizza or some sweet n sour chicken, those tend to snap me back out of this shit... which i know sounds like begging, but... man, genuine that shit works and i don't know why.

more shitty pony art

i'd say a lot about this image but i think the title of "lance dangles pay off a cliff" speaks for itself.

full ver

filterless

textless

 

and bonus: the animaniacs reboot apparently has a portal ref so i'm sharing a clip lexi sent here, for anyone who gives a fuck about this blog to... idk also revel in the nerd glory i guess:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AErHSyQGxmU 

does anyone even read this blog?

whatever, not like i can care.
-Lance

more pictures

my finger is in the corner. that's all you're going to notice now, good luck.

bunch of plants.

this is a little white flower... that grows into this weed-y thing when it gets taller.

more plants. the rock looking bit there is actually a chunk of concrete. no i do not understand why we have chunks of concrete in the yard. they've been there since we moved in.

a fly landed on this plant. i thought it looked interesting enough to get a picture of.

nice plant. and yes, i know the purple flowers that grow into the red berries are actually a nightshade plant. there's less forest in our yard than you might think, and it's not like i'm gathering food from out there or anything, so there isn't a reason to worry about me.

stick. looked cool.

various plants. the green berries are the exact same as the red ones, just not ripe. they look really fucking pretty in pictures though.

the white in the background is a house. it looks like the sky though if you squint.

a water droplet. it had rained earlier before i went out. the pine tree was dripping water and it kept hitting my head.

this goes with the picture of the stick. it was hard to get the camera to focus on the berries rather than the stick. and then it was harder to get it to focus back on the stick again.

the pumpkin-y bit.

slug. just doing slug things and slugging along. as slugs do.

This was done by just angling my iPad really carefully and then snagging the pictures.
They're literally all from my yard.
Most are from the overgrown spot near the big pine tree though, so it already helped a fair bit that it looks pretty forest-y when you're close to it.
Except the bit with the pumpkin leaves, that's further out in the yard.
If this were a photography project, it'd probably be called something pretentious and stupid like "Turning the micro into macro." (for any dumbasses that stumble upon my blog: micro is small. macro is big. make the small look big = turn the micro into macro).

That's all for now.
Do expect another XBox Startup Effects video at some point though.
Bye for now though!
-Lance

photos

I'm gonna call these "Life in Kaleido" since, well, I put a kaleidoscope (that came with a tent of all things) up to the camera of an iPad and got some really nice images. Also it's kinda expected to have "Life in/of" as part of the title for dumb photography stuff like this, soo...

Anyways, onto the photos!

Looks like purple limbs. Of what type, I will not say. But it usually does not come in pairs, I'll tell ya that. ;)

Dunno. Maybe call it Golden Clovers? But they aren't really four-leafed, it's either 6 leaves or 3 of the weird heart-shaped ones depending on how you look at it.

Excuse the awful quality of this one, I had to screw with the image a ton after realizing it wasn't the best quality. It was also the first image I took, no idea why it uploaded as the third.

This one also looks nice. It looks kinda like flowers. Red flowers. With blue leaves. I think I like this one almost the best.

This one has a triangle, I guess.

Aaaanyways... that's literally it for this post.
Light on substance, mostly because I just had a spur of the moment "hey I could post these!" thing happen.
Sorry it isn't Slime Climb or anything that anybody wants, but motivation is just kinda... really ridiculously hard to find right now.
I guess I'll see y'all in the next post.
If I make one, that is.
As I said, hard to find motivation to actually do stuff.
This sucks.
Bye for now, though.
-Lance