Footnote: This Look Familiar? Or Want More? This Is My New Blog! Due To Some Technical Issues With The

Footnote: This look familiar? Or want more? This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I will be rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing the future rambles!

Media Marvel Monday, #3:

Covetous, it’s the Name of the Game

There’s a lot of reasons I love games you can finish in their entirety in 5-30 minute sit downs. Usually, they’re extremely affordable. They’ll typically run fine even on old garbage computers. They’ve very characteristic of host sites that make great breeding grounds for original and extremely creative forms of storytelling (newgrounds and Itchio come to mind. They’re often browser games that don’t make me have to go through any middlemen of downloads or extra set up. My diagnosed ADHD really likes that one in particular. You get going, you get the idea, you move on. (Or obsessively gnaw over it here and there for the next few years until you make sure you’ve introduced it to everyun who cares to listen, heh~)

It’s the kind of format that may have a low barrier to entry (relative to game design as a whole) but what it really strains a creator for, what it demands out of them in return, if it wants to be seen and remembered out of a sea of other 3 minute indie titles, is a remarkable craftiness at presenting its “gist” well. Where content’s quantity is lacking, quality better not be damned.

Few things to me are more impressive than an artist of any medium being able to show off just how little room they need to knock it out of the park with a premise. You may guess this might also be what I love so much about flipnote animation, about short stories and creepypastas the same. Have no doubt it’ll be a recurring theme in this series.

Now, of all the works to spotlight after this sort of introduction, where does Covetous exactly slot in, and why? For one, it’s as short and bare bones as a finished narrative can get. The controls are limited to arrow/WASD keys, the soundtrack a minimal and repetitive handful of notes, and the visuals boiled down to a vague and pixelated art style. Short game too. Two possible endings, and you can easily get through both of them in about the time it takes to eat lunch. Getting through Covetous feels a little less like gameplay and a lot more like progressing through a tone poem, and that has to do with the background of how this golden nugget came to be.

Austin Breed is a prop and background designer who’s dabbled about in sketch artistry, animation, and pixel/flash art games. Covetous was released on July 18th, 2010 as his personal entry into the Ludum Mini-Dare 20. For context, you can basically think of Ludum Dare as the indie game developer equivalent of those little writers’ boot camp events and competitions- an online jamboree that challenges programmers to scratch-bake entire games within a single weekend, centered around a chosen theme. And the theme selected for the Mini-Dare 20 was greed.

That’s the main tone of this poem alright, but it’s not the only one, and it’s not in the way you’re thinking for sure. This tale is about the greed of a parasite. Of a cancer. It doesn’t yearn but for one primitive wish.

"I never desired wealth or status. Just existence."

The story’s unsettling approach on the concept of greed is hinted at from the title right out. To “greed” is to crave more than what you already have without being filled. “covetousness” is more specific: a desire to take what someone else has for yourself. What does it look like to covet existence? Breed’s answer comes inspired from a little bit of medical nightmare fuel wrapped in a healthy dose of body horror.

You may have heard of the term “parasitic” or vestigial twin before. Take two siblings in the womb, they develop conjoined in a way where one survives and grows fine, but the other one kind of gets stunted as a hanger-on clump of extra meat that can’t survive on its own, but it’s not in any way really conscious.

Fetus in Fetu describes a complication on another level of rarity where the embryotic parasitic twin becomes absorbed into the host body, and it remains enveloped in their tissues or organs, possibly for years before its ever even detected. In such cases the partially formed twin is more comparable to a tumor than an actual, living fetus, usually first mistaken for cysts or malignant teratomas when they cause problems for their host. The phenomenon is freaky enough on the face of the matter, and Covetous takes the concept to a further leap of disturbing.

Players begin the game upon a single line of text, delivered to them by our arguably villainous protagonist:

"By some kind of miracle, I was given another chance of life."

They are immediately treated to the graphic of their play area: the pixel body of a smiling human. A few curious taps of the arrow keys will lead to figuring out that you play as a single flashing pixel, with the goal of moving towards the few green pixels within reach, apparently consuming them. The next line from our character elaborates.

"I was the forgotten cell, left to die in the flesh of my brother."

The first sequence of play repeats, except now our single red/white pixel has grown into a larger clump, with much more "food" around to eat. And again, and again, each time with the narrator giving another card of its thoughts, and eventually showing the human's face turning into that of a frown. The confirmation could not be clear enough that you are playing as an intelligent Fetus in Fetu teratoma, aware of its circumstances and bitterly envious of its healthy sibling's survival. It's like Cain and Abel meeting the aesthetic of the Alien franchise and the utterly raw dialogue, overwhelming flashes and sirens, and medical inspiration only coalesque together to make the brief experience one that has kept its players up at night and unable to forget what they just saw.

The creature's own tale ultimately ends in one of two ways, determined by the player in a timed button-mashing final scene. This is the point where I would REALLY recommend playing Covetous for yourself, especially because I would hate to spoil something you can churn through in literally less time than it takes to read this far anyway, but major epilepsy/sensitivity warning as well, there is a lot of bright flashing and unpleasant audio involved near the end.

In the first ending, the protagonist violently erupts through the body of his brother, killing him and taking its first breath of life beyond the prison of its host. In the second, curiously, the creature seems to give up the effort and allows itself to shrivel and die instead, the final thought reading:

"In the end, I couldn't do it. I couldn't put myself to steal from another what was once stolen from me."

I love this hidden gem for scaring the shit out of me when I was younger. It was creative, unique, but most of all, it was effective in getting across exactly what it wanted to even with it's 48 hour production. There's what I wanna call a media marvel.

Bloodthirst

Indecency

Brutalism

Fucking SAVAGE

Pardon my southern but I was trying to show off (to my friends) how big this wolf spider was that got into the house, and instead we’re laughing like hyenas over this blooper

No, I did not think this through very well, in fact.

"I can fix him" not in a "I can make him into a better person" way but in a "if he was my character I would've handled his story better" way

Scrumptious addition!

WOW. OK. I just finished the S3 Ep2 of Moral Orel, “Innocence” and it suddenly clicked for me.

People were making the observations about how Orel seemingly just goes out of his way to interpret all of the lessons he’s given in the least charitable and most nonsensical way. And for the first good part of the show you think this is just the function of an over the top comedic bit for the formula of each episode. It’s so easy to ask how on earth a seemingly kind hearted, well meaning kid like this can be THAT devoid of the basic logical implications of what he hears, or any common moral intuition that virtually everyone has, right?

Orel’s not a stupid kid. But the entire problem with him up to the point thus far is that he legit DOES NOT in fact have that intuition we expect most people, even children to have. That knee-jerk repulsion to obviously harmful actions. That really vital sense of conscience. No, I don’t mean he’s some kind of psychopath, I mean that Orel has never had a functioning moral compass modeled to him to begin with. His ethical axioms are ALL rooted in divine command theory. To put it simply, he doesn’t believe “god is good”, he believes “good is only what god says is good”. Most Christians, hell, most religious people generally do not literally, consciously operate in this way, and usually even the ones that do are (mostly) still functionally average people, because usually they were at least consistently conditioned to believe that axioms like human well-being are what God commands. To at least a fortunate degree, human empathy and socialization usually is allowed to and even encouraged to develop under mainstream religious upbringings.

You notice the glaring difference though when you see what happens to people who are molded entirely by Divine Command Theory and then become convinced that their God’s divine command is something that doesn’t happen to line up with conventionally good ideals, like those given earlier. This is what destructive cults do. This is what makes crusades. This is what causes anti-sodomy laws and stoning people to death for eating the wrong kind of fish or not wearing the right clothes to happen.

Understand that this is the hinge that Orel’s whole sense of right and wrong up to this point swings on. What it means is that this little boy can, and will, justify or excuse any and all directions given to him so long as he trusts the adult talking to him as someone who speaks for God. This combined with his craving for approval, plus the fact that he’s also had it drilled in his head to never question or doubt his elders’ wisdom makes for a child zealot that is dangerously easy to manipulate to do ANYTHING and with fanatical determination. It is less than no additional help that the Puppingtons (and the majority of the townsfolk) have never been golden examples for healthy social modeling, as well. Like, sure, he’s getting glimmers of actual goodness in there such as the Jesus loves you so love yourself and help thy neighbors messaging, but it’s being inconsistently contradicted by and juggled alongside at same hierarchical importance as “lessons” like beat the shit out of people who make fists, kick out the brown people, and you should be terrified of the same authority you expect safety and comfort from. Why on earth is it shocking that Orel seemingly has no sense of scale or priority when it comes to the rules? The rules he’s given are subject to constant and chaotic updates and are all treated the same gravity. Follow X and you will be promised infinite reward. Disobey X and you will be met with infinite retribution. Not just even in a spiritual heaven and hell sense, but here in life too. Clay delivers the same punishment for getting hooked on crack or becoming a serial rapist that he does for the “sin” of using slang vernacular and meditating to relieve stress.

Everything that defines his life and virtues is a matter of constant anxiety and eagerness in order to appease a patriarchal tyrant that is portrayed as both ultimately benevolent and wise,

yet incredibly vindictive, sadistic, irrational, and petty.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this description can equally apply to Moralton’s perception of God and a certain alcoholic father.

No kidding when I say that Orel has so little consistent  input to actually steer him in the right direction that it’s incredibly sad, to the point where he’s extremely fortunate to actually have such an optimistic and compassionate inclination at all. It only seems ridiculous how he can’t see obvious suffering and even personal detriment as any red flags to hesitate or question an action, until you remember that he’s so been domestically broken by Clay and his church that his Pavlovian response to pain is either gratitude, mild inconvenience, or fucking masochistic euphoria.

Nonetheless, all of this only backfires on every adult in Moralton because the one thing they can’t control or account for 24/7 is exactly how he interprets what they say, even when he’s trying his best to follow their command. It’s like a twisted Amelia Bedelia situation with him that no one actually wants to deal with, even though they all (except probably Stephanie) collectively played a part in creating this monster.

Censordoll was the first one who was smart and ambitious enough to see the potential for Orel’s blind subservience to be weaponized, and of freaking course she was.

Thing is, you bet the ONLY reason she stopped was because she also lost control of him, and we all know what the consequence of that was. He unintentionally yet absolutely destroyed her in the only weak point she has, yet exactly like Clay did during the “turn the other cheek” incident, she trapped herself in a situation where she couldn’t swallow her own pride in the name of reversing the damage.

What I guess I’m explaining here is that Orel’s collection of constant shenanigans, unknowingly, yet effectively, is literally a manifestation of the community’s own complete moral bankruptcy biting them back in the ass, and possibly even a divine punishment for it, depending on how you interpret the writing. Which is a HELL of a phenomenal, subtle twist to his whole premise that doesn’t abandon the original joke/satire, but instead builds upon it and adds a chasm of depth and intention.

Hot DOG~!

Footnote: recognize this? Or feel like more? This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I will be rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing the future rambles therein!

Media Marvel Monday, #1:

The Bittersweetness of Tri-arachnid

What can I say, I grew up practically obsessed with short, “artsy” games during the haydays of flash media. Didn’t really matter the website, but I found myself on Newgrounds for an almost embarrassing amount of my terminally online youth. Now, it made a great hub for unique pools or art and animation in general, but the games are what really drew me in, and I’ve considered Edmund McMillen to be something of a core-memory dispensing legend since I was roughly 8 or 9 years old. Ages before something like the Basement Collection would have been conceived, I had already played through a decent amount of the titles that would composite it together, back when they were just random titles you’d stumble across in a sea of indie nuggets.

What I’m trying to say is the dude’s work left a really big impact on me from a young age, and there are two particular works of his I always keep coming back to. The first is Coil, and the second is the topic of this specific post, originally released in 2006.

Even Tri-Arachnid’s title is something to be endeared. It’s to the point and accurate. You play as an actual, tripod arachnid, one of a species of adorable tripods, and perhaps, maybe even one of the last of a special kind.

At face value it’s a fairly challenging, but not very frustrating game, with some very hands on controls. The spider-like in question is moved through levels by manually guiding the legs, one at a time, to walk along, up, down, and around the map and its obstacles, grabbing and manipulating objects as needed to solve puzzles. You can additionally use the keyboard to adjust the arachnid’s balance and spin your own all-purpose silk ropes, which can be swung from, hold your things, or even be used to trap enemies within. The three-legs model and straightforward control scheme honestly makes it play pretty damn smoothly for its age by intentionally aiming for something other manual-physics-sim type of games aren’t really known for: simplicity. It’s actually a pretty fun and unique design for a playable creature, and I still don’t mind replaying the game through even for the one or two rockier levels. The concept design is also just what it needs to be, not too much, and certainly more than enough to get me invested into a other one of McMillen’s curious fictional ecosystems.

The particular Tri-arachnid we play as begins his story as one half of a mated pair of parents, each playing a part in watching their literal bundle of pride and joy, by which I mean their silk bound egg sac. Everything’s going great for the happy fella until some jerk bigger monster comes along with the audacity of needing to eat to survive, and picking the arachnid’s mate for its next meal. And the rest of the game thereafter follows our endangered tri-arachnid on the quest to reunite with his egg sac and to trek across a dangerous rockface, dive through caves, and even plunge through the belly of the beast itself in search for a better home, and therefore, a safer future for the dwindling species. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the whole thing is set to some amazingly memorable works from Tin Hat Trio.

You’d probably guess from an opening like that it’s… kind of a sad little game? And it is. The Tri-arachnid really can’t catch a break even after he’s recovered his young the first time. Yeah, first. You do become separated again, and have to deal with many manners of dangers and challenges. There’s even plenty of “stray” or orphaned little tri-arachnid larva scattered throughout the playable levels. Mechanically, they’re collectibles you can find to unlock sections out of the game’s bestiary and other bonus features. Story-wise, though, it’s pretty clear they’re yet another sign of the dire situation your kind has fallen into, and left to their own devices, probably don’t have a kind fate in store for them.

All that said, the central theme of this tale is not actually the bleakness of a dying species. It’s filled with hope and determination to salvage what remains. It’s about this funky little three-legged critter and what a massive and courageous heart he has, not just to find a haven for his own young, but to carry along all of the other little tripod grubs(?) he comes across without a moment’s hesitation. Its about how he expresses a whole swath of emotions we want to empathize with without a single word of dialogue. It’s about moving on from the tragedies behind him and his will to keep crawling, one leg over another, to reach a a brighter place. For all his hard work, I think the tri-arachnids may just be alright, in the end. At the very least, he’s fought hard to give them a beautiful opportunity. He succeeded, and I gotta be happy for him, even granting his uncertain path ahead.