Ossu! Good morning to y'all! It's Friday, and that means it's time for another go about.

https://youtu.be/nGK1Bb8XaRM

This time around we're looking at:

Cardboard Jump n Run - xBnj-AT
Trouble In Paradise - KolbyRyan
Sulfer caves - killakif
The Sackbot Factory - randycats17
The Ruins of the Elves - HostileBunny16

A bit on a nice mix of levels this week. Hopefully you'll find something in there that looks like a good time. Thanks, as always, for all the support, and i hope you have a great day!

Behind the Curtains Stuffs
Hard to believe we've worked our way through the alphabet already, here. The half-year's gone by stupid quick. Then again, last year was the same, so i shouldn't really be shocked.

We're trying out that one big PiP idea we put out in the Livestream thread. It did make it easier to put in more material without having to thread video covering multiple points and hope it was enough to cover segue language and such. The good side was it made it a lot easier to have video for a minimum of three points per level. The weird thing was...even using the timestamps from ShareFactory when trimming the video footage and then the in-between logo on black field, when i actually put the PiPs in the video, they weren't syncing up the way they should have according to my notes. It's going to take a little more playing around to get things just where i want them, but i think it should work out better in the end.

The hub for episode 027 is mostly complete. i've got to get the cameras and music in there, but that's no big deal i think. Got the title card put together too, and since the initial level recordings are done, i should be able to get the whole she-bang wrapped up today. That'll put us back on schedule, but i haven't gotten any work done on episode 028's hub, so that's a thing to worry about.

Ossu! Time for the Tuesday Takeaway!

Cardboard Jump n Run - xBnj-AT
Simple, and straightforward in presentation and design. You could say it's a bit archetypal, i suppose, but as a representative of the style, it's solid on and worth playing. For some reason i was playing like junk this morning, so there were a lot more deaths this go about. Even so, i never found myself getting frustrated with it. The Toggle bit at the end, though, did feel even more extraneous this time around than the first two or three. i really don't see the point of including another character, or power-up, if you're not seriously going to incorporate them into the level.

Trouble in Paradise - kolbyryan
i suppose the level's not really long enough to be bad, though that is kind of bad in itself. Any one of the level elements could have been built up and reused in later parts of the level to give a more robust experience. Like i said in the video, i really liked the use of the Hook Hat for actual gameplay. 99% of the time, you're just riding it to the end, and while that can be a nice way to show off more of the environment, it is kind of a waste.

Sulfer caves - killakif
Straight up, i did not even come close to finishing this one, this go about. It's not common, but through the series so far, every now and again i run into a level i just dread re-playing for PiPs or the Takeaway. They're generally not bad levels, per se, they just tend to be over-long, or excessively frustrating. This one managed to check both those boxes. i really think slicing this one up into three discrete levels, all grouped around one or two of the play elements, would have made for a better, and more manageable, experience. Still, i have to say, i really really dug on the music, at least.

The Sackbot Factory - RandyCats17
Meh.... i think we know the big issue here. i guess they may have felt, because the level is relatively short, that they didn't really need the checkpoints, but they seriously did. i ended up getting myself killed about half-way through because i was trying to use the Boost Boots to break the level (which is kind of possible, you can use them so you don't need to interact with some of the obstacles, but the cameras make that awkward enough that you're really better of just doing them as presented). i never tried playing with Collected Object obstacles and game elements, and that is i think a failing on my part. i mean, they're there to show you how different tools can be used to set something up; kind of a cookbook to learn from, and i never even bothered to try. And this is why it took me years to figure out how to get even simple things like pistons to work the way i wanted them even semi-consistently.

The Ruins of the Elves - HostileBunny16
There's not really too much to say about this one. Although (or perhaps because) the scope is much more limited, i think i liked it more than any of the redwalker6 level's i've played. There's no slow-down, no loading, you can just enjoy the environment and actually have all the elements spawned in where they need to be. On the other hand, like most levels of this stripe, you're not really doing all that much. It might have been worth having a few simple puzzles to open up progress. Nothing too fancy, or thermo heavy, just enough to let the player feel like they're actually interacting with the environment. Still, this is a nice one i wouldn't have any trouble recommending to people.

So, that's the that. Not the worst playlist we've had, but also, not one that really stands strong (as a unit; on their own, some of the levels are quite nice). Hopefully there's something in there that caught your eye, at least. Thanks for all the support, everyone, and have a great day!

Behind the Curtains Stuffs
It was fun coming back to Dooooooinaka-mura Station. The idea popped into mind when i realized we had Season 1 episode 026 there too. Getting the trains to do what i needed them to, was...a thing, because i had to basically rebuild the logic from scratch. i liked Maya the Dollface (whose costume worked out really cool, i didn't realize the cat mask would interact with a SackThing like that) and Mr. 89, even if their story is a bit on the cliche side. We were going to have more (and who knows, they might come back some day), but i didn't want the intro to drag on much longer.

On the other hand, using that set means having to progress Manny's shock-collar arc a bit sooner than i'd originally intended. And that means a string of...four new hubs (starting from the station), all with their own fiddly issues and things to build and decorate. Which means i'm only about 1/2 maybe 2/3rds the way through just the build for episode 028's hub. *sigh* Why do i do these things to myself? At least we've got all of episode 027 done but for the PiPs.

During the stream, i made an offhand bit about Windows eating Gary... this was completely wrong. Windows got eaten by Palmer. Gary gets a face full of Blair. i deeply apologize for the confusion.