The Glitched Call Is Coming From Inside The Game

 

The latest "Special Program" for Neverness To Everness's next big update is out. It's fifty-three minutes long although the first ten minutes of that is just a timer ticking down, so call it three-quarters of an hour. It's still a long watch, either way.

And for the first time I watched it all. Usually I just skim through to see the highlights or read a summary if I can find one but now I'm retired I have the time. 

I was hoping to find it informative. I wasn't expecting it to be entertaining too. But it was.

After those first ten minutes of counting down, which I did skip because I'm not that desperate for entertainment, the host comes on to introduce the two people joining him in the discussion. They're two designers going by the names Baggie and Naomi. 

At this point, I still had the video running as an embed on the MMO Bomb page where I'd heard about the update. I wasn't paying that much attention, waiting for the whole thing to get started, but I perked up at the thought of getting some insights from the team behind the game. I was a little surprised they both had Westernized nicknames but then I figured they'd have been cherry-picked for the English-language version for a reason.

And then they started talking. Baggie sounded odd but Naomi... Naomi sounded exactly like she was one of the many helium-voiced characters in the game itself. That got my full attention. What the hell...?

I opened the window to full screen and the mystery was instantly revealed. Baggie is a cardboard box. Naomi and the host are chibi figures. The whole vodcast is metafictional. These aren't the designers who work in some office building in Suzhou, China. They're... 

 

Well, it's hard to pin down what they are. The NTE YouTube channel says "It's real. It's fiction" which doesn't really help a lot. 

They might be representations of actual designers but they also might be notional designers who live and work in another layer of reality that lies between ours and the game itself. Or they might be in the game-world. I'm not sure there's a clear explanation.

As a conceit, though, it's delicious. I never normally sit through these things but I was transfixed. The three of them chatted away in a far more entertaining and professional manner than any game designers I can remember seeing. The whole thing comes across as the kind of thing you might watch and listen to for fun, not just because you wanted to dig out the few nuggets of useful information buried in the awkward banter, uncomfortable pauses and lame in-jokes that are all too familiar from promos featuring the people who make the games.

It's a good thing the format and the presentation were strong because the content they're plugging is less so. It's not terrible but on a first look it doesn't seem to be up to the standards of the better previous releases. Then again, the last one was so good it was always going to be hard follow.

If you were hoping we'd get to explore some more of Hethereau, like that huge district across the river they've just re-designed, you're in for a disappointment. The story element this time revolves around ETD-6, the security unit for which Linko and Chaos work. 

ETD-6 is responsible for dealing with Anomaly crime and also with Meme Anomalies. We've run into some of the team already but never the two people supposedly in charge of the division, Lieutenant Elyms and Captain Exe. I thought Chaos was in charge so it shows what I know.

The update is called Once Upon A Glitched Call and the action takes place in "...a vast stretch of cyerspace that's a blend of nostalgia core, dreamcore, and poolcore. ...A flooded city floating in a digital ocean". Another Anomalous Realm, then, as opposed to any part of Hethereau or the physical space it occupies.

The set-up is that an "Invalid Number" is being propagated through Bagel. Once people hear about it, they can't stop thinking about it, although what actual harm it does, other than being the telephonic equivalent of an annoying earworm, isn't immediately clear. Anyway, ETD-6 has been tasked with putting a stop to it, presumably because the most likely explanation is some kind of Meme Anomaly.

I'm confident it will be an interesting and enjoyable story. They all have been so far. And it is at least an active Anomaly investigation, for once. The whole narrative arc of the game still feels nebulous and ill-defined, though, and this doesn't, on the face of it, takes us any further towards a sense of overall purpose. Maybe there just isn't one and the whole game will be episodic, always. 

Which is fine on paper. I don't have a problem with it, conceptually. But the open world rpg gacha game market is highly competitive right now. Games need a strong storyline to keep players interested or they'll just wander off . NTE only has one more update after this one to get us all firmly hooked before Ananta arrives on January 15, which is where I'll be going.

And sometime after that there's another game I just heard about that sounds even more intriguing. That one's called Ordinary Oddness and I'm already pre-registered with the game wishlisted on Steam. 

But let's not get distracted. That's for a separate post.

 

The point is, good as all these games can be, even with a six-week cadence and huge content drops every time, it's still not guaranteed they'll hold an audience. There's just too much choice. I have absolutely no complaints at all about Wuthering Waves, for example. It may be the best of all these titles. And yet since I fell off it for a few weeks, through no fault of the game's, I've never been able to climb back on.  

For now, I'm committed to NTE. I play it virtually every day and really enjoy it. One update that doesn't quite grab me, though, and that could turn into a few weeks when I'm not really feeling it and then some other, no doubt very similar, game will take its opportunity to suck me in and that may very well be that for Hethereau.

Yeah, Hotta will be really gutted to lose the no money I was giving them, I bet So many great, free games, so many cheap, stingy players...

Even though the Special Program puts the story update front and center, the trailer doesn't make it look all that interesting. Or exciting. It's a lot of hanging telephones and shots of the digital city, and even there a warning along the bottom of the screen makes clear this isn't necessarily how the place might look in the game itself.

So, yeah, I was underwhelmed. What else is there? Quite a lot and none of it all that thrilling either, I'd say. 

The two banner characters are, of course, Elyms and Exe, who appear as pulls in that order. Having never met either of them, my interest, going in, is about as low as it could be and nothing I heard about them in the Program made me feel any more enthusiastic. Elyms is yet another bubbly, outgoing young woman, of whom I already have more than enough on my team. Exe sounds like a dull introvert with no social skills, which seems to be going too far in the other direction. 

 His name, by the way, is weirdly pronounced by all three presenters as if it were three separate letters, E-X-E, as opposed to the much more natural X. That also did not endear him to me.

Coming back, as the characters you can try for again if you missed them last time, are Shinku and Chaos. I opted out of pulling for both of them first time around and I can't imagine I'll feel any differently this time but at the moment I'd rather roll for either of them than Exe or Elyms.

There are two new vehicles, both of which are nuts. One's a toy lion. The other's a tank. The lion has the dubious USP of requiring Fons to go into overdrive, which is not what I'd call a winning feature. The tank, though, comes with a working cannon you can use when fighting anomalies and bandits on the streets of Hethereau and it also features in a new World of Tanksesque arena mode, where four players try to blow each other off the map. That does look like it might be fun.

Another major addition is a whole new business enterprise. You move from making your own deliveries to managing a team of drivers who'll make them for you. It's a full sub-game along the lines of the existing Cafe Origen one, with its own progression and rewards. You'll be able to meet job-seeking NPCs on the streets of Hethereau and choose which you want to hire. There are different vehicles and skins for them and all of that stuff.

 I am not interested in so many ways but also interested, too. I don't do deliveries because driving in NTE is not much fun, so in theory this would play to my weakness. But then, I also don't like business management games, so it might just be swapping one mode I don't enjoy for another. I do like talking to NPCs, though, and apparently the delivery business will open up some "factions" in Hethereau to interact with, including the criminal underground. That does intrigue me.

I'll probably at least try it but it's not really my kind of thing. Neither is combat and yet I paid full attention to the huge section of the program that goes into just how effective Exe and Elyms can be in a fight. It's not that I want to use them but it's interesting in how it really showcases just how complex combat in the game is, while making me wonder how that can somehow still matter so little that although I'm really, really bad at it and don't take any trouble to get any better, I can get through the fights just fine. 

Another addition I will not be bothering with is a new board game from the in-world company that gave us 999 Nights. Sadly, this isn't another RPG but some kind of city sim where you place businesses to try and get the maximum footfall. There's a long explanation in the video that bored the fekkin' backside off me in seconds. It was the only part I fast-forwarded. Hard pass on that.

 There are, of course, the usual new outfits, all of which are horrible. Seriously, who designs the male clothing for this game and why are they still in work? And why does everything have to be silver and black? The women deck themselves out like explosions in a paint factory and the men look like they've just walked off the set of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

The only good news about costumes is that some of the existing ones can now be worn by more than one character. I haven't got any of those though so...

There are a few tweaks and changes to some of the existing features and word of a visual upgrade for players on mobile and that, I think, is about it. I did all this from memory so I probably missed something important. Oh, yeah, there will be overflow storage for Stamina and Pixels, which would have been handy for me if it had come in months ago. Not so much now.

The update arrives on November 11. There's a five minute video with just the highlights if you need it. 

I'm looking forward to it all about as much as you can look forward to anything you're not much looking forward to, I guess. Let's hope I'm back here on the 12th to eat my words.

The Melancholy Of Akane Rin

I saw, on MassivelyOP last night, that there was a new Neverness To Everness trailer out, promoting the arrival of Akane in the next update. The piece, by the always-reliable Chris Neal, mentioned that it featured a cover of a song called God Knows.  

I didn't know it and it comes from an anime I'd never heard of either - The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya - but then there are a lot of songs and animes I don't know. Almost all of them, really.

It was late when I saw the post. Intrigued as I was, I didn't have time to watch it then. Now I have. Oh, boy...

Let me begin with the set-up. Akane is a twenty-something (I'm guessing.) woman, who used to be in a band. These days, she manages an underground club that puts on live music. She seems to be the only employee, although there's an owner who shows up sometimes.

Through some wily teenage manipulatory techniques, Haniel and Nanally, who have already persuaded the Appraiser to join them on drums, somehow manage to get Akane to agree to front their (Newly formed and barely competent.) band, The Whoots!!! They rehearse a couple of times and they don't get much better but Akane helps them by putting them on, bottom of the bill, at the club. Luckily for them, she comes on with them and basically carries them with her professionalism, experience and actual musical ability.

When the next update lands, on October 21, it will feature a storyline centering on Akane and the band and what happens after that. I have no idea what's going to happen but based on the trailer, it's going to involve a big step up from bottom of the bill.

Here's the trailer. It's over six minutes long but that's the same song twice, the first time with the female version of Zero behind the drums, the second time with her male counterpart in the seat.

I'm very glad Hotta chose to do it that way. I'm even gladder (Is that a word?) they did it in that order. Watching the male Appraiser didn't do much for me but watching the version I play...

I don't think I've ever had an experience quite as strange, while watching a game trailer, as seeing my own character performing an entire song, live on stage. I literally got chills down my spine at one point. It was weird.

As I've said in the past, I'm not one of those players who tries to make characters that look as much like them as possible. Neither do I see my character as a representation of myself. Even with that distancing, though, I do end up having a close relationship with any character I play for as many hours as I've played Flora. She might not be me but she also is me, in a way, whether I like it or not.

Of course, when you play any game where the central character isn't one you've been allowed to create for yourself, you're going to see them appear in promotional material, doing all sorts of things. Fighting, usually. But I don't fight much in real life, especially with monsters. It's not something I find kicks up a lot of memories for me. Well, not of anything other than playing video games.

I don't play the drums, either. But I have been in a band and I have played in front of an audience, albeit not one as enthusiastic as this. And I have sat behind that kit, in the game, as that character, and tried to play those drums. The way those experiences, memories and levels of realities overlap feels a little disturbing, psychologically. Or at least it does for me.

Luckily, the version of the Appraiser in the video is one hell of a lot better at playing the drums than I am, either in the game or in real life. Like probably everyone who's ever been in any kind of rock band, I did get our drummer to let me have a go on several occasions. It always looks so easy. It is not.

 

I kind of hope there isn't too much actual drumming in the story when it comes, although I bet there is. I'll just have to suspend disbelief, the way I had to about the speed at which Haniel and Nanally improved. Seriously, it was like three rehearsals...  

The song itself is excellent. Also incomprehensible, for me, since Akane sings it the original Japanese. It is Akane, too, or rather it's the Japanese voice actor who plays her, Ikumi Hasegawa. (The voice actor for the English dub is Cristina Vee. I don't know if she's going to sing in English in the game...) No word on who did Akane's impressive shredding, though. If that was Hasegawa, too, I can't imagine why she's still working as a voiceover artist.

Naturally, the first thing I did after I watched the video was look up the anime. What I know about anime could fill about two sides of A5, if I wrote it in capitals with a felt pen, so it's not much of a surprise that something described as "one of the most iconic animes of the 2000s" was completely new to me. 

I skimmed the massive Wikipedia entry ("Contains an excessive amount of intricate detail."), trying not to pick up too many spoilers, and it looked very much like something I'd enjoy, so I ran one of those "Where can I watch...?" queries, to which the answer was, unsurprisingly, Crunchy Roll. I also checked out the DVD situation because who doesn't want physical these days? I might go that route but cost-wise an add-on sub for Crunchy Roll on Prime seems like the obvious choice.

Or maybe I could watch it for free on YouTube? 

It's not on YouTube. But guess what is? The original version of God Knows, as it appeared in the anime. Now I've watched it, I can see The Whoots!!! cover is very faithful, not just in the way it sounds but in the performance and how it's shot. Take a look.

I'm impressed with the dedication and attention to detail. They've even dressed the Appraiser in something that's a clear call-back to what the drummer wears in the anime. This has clearly been a labor of love for someone.

I think it makes for a great, positive example of the way pop culture doesn't so much feed on itself, as is often said, but reinforces and learns from itself. Back when I started this blog, we were still in the tail-spin of post-modernism. I loved post-modernism (Still do...) but it did sometimes carry an unfortunate taint of superiority - even disdain. I'm very happy to see that the modern version, maybe we could call it pan-modernism, has largely lost that brittle, critical tone and replaced it with warm joy.

Moving away from the metafictional influences, there's also a trailer shedding some light on Akane's back-story. It's called "Letters To Me" and even though it's purely musical, with no dialog at all, I warn you it's a bit of a tear-jerker.

I'm a bit vague on the provenance of that one, which once again is the same song, twice, one each for the female and male versions of the Appraiser. It's not on the official Global NTE channel but several fan channels have it.

Although it's supposedly about Akane, the video really leans into Aurelia's story. She used to play drums in Lines, the band they were in, before he esper powers manifested and she lost the use of her legs. Some of it is flashbacks but some is presumably part of the new storyline. If that's true, it looks like it's going to be an emotional one.

I hope it is. It's the kind of story these games do best, in my opinion, and why I currently find them so much more appealing and rewarding to play than the high fantasy titles I've played for decades. I'm really looking forward to it.

And I'm looking forward to watching The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. Now all I need is for Hotta to announce there's going to be a Neverness To Everness anime and I'll be all set!

Rating Pukaland For Fun And Profit

After I finished yesterday's post, I cracked straight on with this one but - surprise, surprise - it ended up running a lot longer than I planned. I wrote most of it last night, then some more in the morning and I finally finished it in the afternoon. Was it worth it? Let's see...

The first thing I did yesterday, to save me the trouble of logging back into the game for the umpty-umpth time to check for myself, was to ask Gemini to give me the names of all the rides and attractions in Pukaland. It gave me the following list, which as we've come to expect from AI isn't entirely accurate. It's correct as far as it goes but a few are missing. 

The thumbnail descriptions seem about right, though, and it's a handy template so I used it. I kind of wish I hadn't now but too late for that now. It didn't save me any time in the end, either. I had to log in several times anyway, to check details and replay some games to see exactly how they worked. I also watched a bunch of short YouTube videos to refresh my memory of some of the others. 

Then, as I was writing the post, I realized that while I remembered the rides and games well enough, I didn't have a very clear picture of the Pukaland Travelogue event, and it seemed silly not to cover that at the same time, so I spent a while looking at it in detail. 

It's in three parts. One section's called Spooky Adventures, another's called Dreamsnaps and the third doesn't seem to have a name. 

Dreamsnaps is all those big rides you just sit on and go round and around or up and down. Each of those, you only have to do once for the event rewards. This section also includes the fireworks display replay, Where Wishes Bloom, and the gambling tent, Magic Spin, for some reason. 

Spooky Adventures is the Maze, Punchulum, Pixies, Candy Jar, Gold Rush and something called Spooky Cookies, which isn't in the game yet. 

The third, unnamed, section is everything else.

 

 

Here's how Gemini laid it out: 

Scenic Rides & Attractions

Lavaton Gold Rush: A minecart roller coaster that races through a chocolate volcano.
Punchulum Ride: A thrilling swing/pendulum ride located along Puka Avenue.
Candy Jar Raid: A water-based teacup ride where you pilot a cup equipped with a harpoon and cannon to gather treasure and fight off octopus tentacles.
Dreamland Tea Party: A classic spinning carousel-style tea party ride.
Puka Wonder Wheel: A large scenic Ferris wheel.
Pearl Cloud Odyssey: An atmospheric scenic ride.
Pixies Waltz: A spinning or waltz-style ride featuring the Pixies characters.

Mini-Games & Activities

Flora Maze: A large snow/hedge-themed maze where you race against the timer and look for cakes to extend your countdown.
Candy Carousel: A candy-themed rotation challenge.
Plushie Shootout: An interactive shooting gallery mini-game.
Star-Struck: A dart-throwing/timing mini-game.
Whack-a-Puka: A Pukaboo-themed whack-a-mole style game.
Pukaboo Stack: A skill game where you knock down stacked cans/objects. 

Missing from that list are Secret Match, The Magic Spin, the Cloud-Chasing Tour and Where Wishes Bloom. I don't think the way they're split up in the Travelogue makes any more sense than how Gemini has done it so I'm going to stick with the AI version for convenience and just feed the extras in where they seem to fit best.

 

As far as I can tell, everything on the list is in the Travelogue and therefore required but for lots of them you also need to get all the grades (S, A, B, C) from those activities that award them and fulfil four specific criteria on top of that for each, if you want to max out the rewards and get completion for the event. I am not about to write a full walk-through for all of that. There's a decent one here if you need it. 

 

If you just want to farm Stars, you don't need to do any of that. You can just pick your most efficient option and grind it 'til your arms fall off. But the event does hand out huge quantities of Stars, so you'll probably want to do at least the gimmes. And there are plenty of those. 

 

What I'm going to do here is give my impressions of all of the rides and activities in terms of a) how much fun they are and b) how productive they are for earning Puka Stars. It's entirely subjective and if you do it, your experience may be totally different because you may be good at things I'm bad at and vice versa. You'll certainly have different ideas on what is and isn't entertaining.  I've graded them using the same grading system the game uses.

 

With all that in mind... 

 

 

Lavaton Gold Rush - There's a Wild West mining town in Pukaland with a ride that's basically a roller-coaster. You get in a mining cart and race around the track, running into gold coins as you go. The track splits often and comes to dead-ends a lot. You have to hit the directional keys to jump tracks or hit space to jump the car up to hit hanging coins or dodge obstacles so it's one of the most active events. 

 

And it's... alright. Very easy to understand, which is good because none of the rides or attractions come with any kind of instructions and some aren't at all intuitive. Fun once or twice, I'd say. I found it a bit jarring and jangly on the nerves and I wouldn't want to do it too often, which makes it a pretty close analog to a real roller-coaster, I guess. Rewards didn't feel great for the time it takes, though. Generally too much effort for not enough reward.

 

Fun - B

Efficiency - C

  

Punchulum Ride - Speaking of things that aren't intuitive... I had to go look this up online to figure out what the hell I was meant to be doing. It's a big mechanical arm with a cabin you sit in and it swings and turns. It moves automatically and the idea is that you look at the big targets ahead, figure out what directional arrow is on them, then hit the appropriate WASD key as you get there. 

 

All good so far, until you learn there are three colors of targets and they require different key-presses. The Pink ones you just press the key, the blue ones you press and hold and the orange ones you hammer the key repeatedly. How you would ever know that if you didn't look it up out of game I have no idea, although maybe it's all in that Tutorial book I never remember to open. I guess someone must have figured it out somehow, or there'd be no guides.

 

Once you know how it works, this one's good value. I could reliably get an A reward although S remains out of my skill range for now. A is 600 Stars for a two-minute ride, though, which is excellent.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - S

 

 

 

Candy Jar Raid - Another very unintuitive one. You sit in a teacup and go round in a big circle while giant tentacles pretend to attack you. There's no way to get hurt in any of these rides so it's all just for show. In the water around you, you'll see dozens of floating treasure chests and some piles of gold bars. You have a thumping great harpoon. Off you go!

 

First time around I shot at the chests and got nothing. Second time I shot at the giant octopus in the middle. That didn't work either. Third time I accidentally winged one of the tentacles and it took dama ge and popped a health bar so I took the hint and kept shooting at those. That seems to be the idea. You get points for killing them anyway. They take two hits each to kill. Shooting the chests sometimes seemed to give points, sometimes not. Couldn't figure out what made the difference. 

 

I didn't find this one much fun. It took a long time and felt chaotic. I can't remember how many Stars I got but I know it felt like a poor return on time spent. Might be better if i understood exactly what to do but I kinda doubt it.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - C

 

Dreamland Tea Party - As far as I recall, this is just a ride. Fun if you're five years old or want to pretend you are. No rewards. 

 

Fun - A

Efficiency N/A 

 

 

 

Puka Wonder Wheel - A modern take on the classic Ferris Wheel, with pods that close rather than open cars that swing. Another pure ride that doesn't get you any Stars. As noted by Nimgimli in a comment, the wheel goes sooooooooooooo slooooooooooowly...... 

 

I get that big wheels do turn slowly so people can get a good view but not this slowly. And the view isn't even that great either because the structure of the wheel gets in the way. I tabbed out for most of the ride and caught up on some blogs. Flora was at the door, waiting to jump out the second they opened. If I hadn't needed the full ride for the tour credit, I'd have mapped out long before - assuming you can use the map from the pod.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - N/A 

 

Pearl Cloud Odyssey - Do not do this directly before or after Puka Wonder Wheel, unless you need a nap urgently. It's not as dull as the wheel but it's not what I'd call a thrill-ride. You get on a boat much the same as the one you can buy and your invisible butler-turned-boatman sculls you around the lake for what seems like forever. There's not a lot to look at and I made the mistake of going at night, which meant there was even less. 

 

Again, I only stuck it out for the whole thing because you have to do it once for the credit.

 

Fun - B

Efficiency - N/A

 

Cloud-Chasing Tour - This is the one where you go up into the stratosphere in a teacup-balloon. I have a whole post coming about it. For the purposes of the Event it's just a simple ride but as an addition to the game in general it's awesome!

 

Fun - S
Efficiency - N/A 

 

 

 

Where Wishes Bloom - I didn't really understand this one. It's a shop where you can go and get them to replay a memory of the firework display, if you missed it. The fireworks happen every night at a set time but apparently you can do this at any time and see them again. I tried it and nothing seemed to happen. I don't think I got credit for it in the Travelogue either. I guess I did it wrong but I don't care enough to find out for sure.

 

Fun - N/A

Efficiency N/A 

 

Pixies Waltz - OMFG! What even is this?! I had not the first clue what was going on from start to finish. I did it three times and it never even began to make sense. 

 

You're in some kind of gondola that goes up a pole. There are arrow keys to press that do... something and then suddenly you fly up into the air and all hell breaks loose and stuff starts flying around you and you shoot at the stuff and then you crash back down and it all starts up again. I hated it. 

 

Then I watched this video on YouTube, which at least gave me a rough idea what I was supposed to be doing. I hadn't even figured out the arrows were fuelling you up until then. Once I knew what I was meant to do, I still couldn't do it and I still hated it.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - C

 

So much for the rides. On to the sideshows.

 

 

 

Flora Maze - It's a hedge maze. A big one. All you have to do is find the exit. Out of competition, which is where I took the screenshot above or else I wouldn't have been able to climb on top of the hedge, there's a way out in all three sections, which are themed by season - Summer, Autumn, Winter. Once you pay for a ticket and the timer starts, two of those gates are locked. You have to find the one that's still open.

 

You get two minutes but there are power-ups all over the maze in the form of cakes that add seconds to your timer. I managed to stay in there for over ten minutes once and still didn't find the exit. You can't see over the hedges or climb them and none of your esper abilities work so you have to do it properly.

 

All the exits have some bright red bushes on top, though, and you can jump high enough to catch a glimpse of them to see which general direction you need to go. You also get a few seconds at the start when all the hidden features of the maze - exits, cards and NPCs needing to be rescued - light up so you can see their outlines through the foliage. And there's a pair of magic glasses you can use to repeat that, although it knocks a big 12 seconds off your timer every time you use it and it has a cooldown.

 

At first I thought I hated this one. I generally dislike mazes in games and I was finding it frustrating. It had that "one more try" thing going for it, though and I kept at it, mostly just blundering about randomly until one time I fluked my way to the exit and got 900 Stars. That's a huge payoff and it motivated me to keep trying.

 

I watched a video and read some comments and I started to figure it out. After a while, I realised that if I just focused on making sure I knew which Season the door was in, which I could do by carefully watching the reveal at the start, I could pretty much guarantee finding the exit. Eventually. Once I was able to do that, I started enjoying myself and making plenty of Stars.

 

There's also a full set of playing cards scattered around the maze and they don't repeat, so you only have to find each of them once. That kept me interested because I got one on most runs even if I didn't find the exit. I don't know what you get for the full set. I still have two to find. I hope it's something good.

 

I have to say I enjoyed the maze a lot more than I thought I would at the start. I kept doing it long after I found more efficient ways to earn Stars because I found it weirdly compelling. I'll keep at it until I have those last two cards and even after that I might do it some more for fun.

 

Fun - A

Efficiency - A

  

Candy Carousel - Wait, what? What is this? I don't remember it at all.... Okay, I just watched it on YouTube and I've never done it. I don't recall seeing it on the event schedule either. Talk amongst yourselves while I log in and check...

Ok, it's there alright. I just missed it. But I've done it now and I didn't miss much. There's a carousel with large clamshells going round on it. They open and close. You have to toss a round ball into the open ones and a star onto the closed ones. You can change your ammunition from ball to star with the R key. You can also make the carousel revolve the opposite way with Q. You have a limited number of both balls and stars, with a lot more of the former than the latter.

It's fine. I was terrible on my first go but after half a dozen rounds I could get an A rating easily. Couldn't get S though. Of all the games of its kind I'd say it's the least fun but it's still fun enough.

Fun - B 
Efficiency - B

Plushie Shootout - Classic fairground rifle-range. You shoot at two-dimensional targets that are supposed to be plushies as they move across the stage in front of you. They're in several layers from front to back and they move at varying speeds. They hide behind things, too.

I  usually like games like this, both on a screen and at an actual fairground. This isn't a particularly great example but it's fine. The rewards seemed a bit stingy from what I remember but it was one of the first ones I tried and I've forgotten exactly how much I got. Can't have been that much, though, or I'd have gone back  before now.

Fun -A
Efficiency - C 

 Secret Match - There are some cans on a board in front of you. They lift up to reveal some pairs of objects underneath. Then they get covered up again and you have to pick the pairs. As the game goes on the number of objects increases and the cans get moved about like in Find the Lady.

It's a pretty basic version of the old memory game. I'm hopeless at anything that involves remembering anything but even I could do this one. If you're good at pelmanism you'll walk it.

Fun - B
Efficiency - B

 

Star-Struck - Despite the misleading name, this is a darts game. You get five darts and thirty seconds to throw them. You're trying to get the highest score but anything over 150 is S-Class and 100 gets you A so the bar is quite low. 

The way you throw the darts is simple: there's a reticule that moves slowly and erratically about. You control it with WASD and when you have the center over the number you want to hit, you release the dart. Do that five times and you're done.

This was the first game I tried and I loved it. I played it over and over and enjoyed it every time. It took me a long time to realise that where the darts display as having landed on the board isn't where they land as far as scoring is concerned. Once I figured out the only thing that matters is where the central dot on the reticule is when you let the dart go, it got a lot easier.

After a while, I could get S about 80% of the time and A 100% of the time. And I could do it it in under ten seconds. The individual rewards are very small but if you like the game and you can play as fast as that, it becomes very efficient indeed.

Fun - S
Efficiency - S

The Magic Spin- Flat-out gambling. You bet Stars and the wheel spins. You can win double or even ten times your stake or you can get your stake money back, or half of it, or nothing. There's a chance of a 50k jackpot, too. I gave it a few spins, came out even and stopped. If it's anything like the Catzebo, it'll just slowly drain your wallet until you're broke. Best avoided but gambling is fun....

Fun - B
Efficiency - C

 

Whack-a-Puka - I like the way we're supposed to know what a Pukaboo is. Or, for that matter, how Pixies figure into things. I get the strong feeling the real citizens of Hethereau, the ones who were born there and grew up in the city, are as familiar with the Puka mythology as we are with Peter Pan or Winnie the Pooh. 

Of course, Zero aka the Appraiser aka Flora is almost as ignorant of the society she finds herself in as we, the players. It's quite important to remember that while playing. The whole "I woke up not knowing anything about the world I'm in" trope is extremely useful in allowing the player-character to act as an agent on behalf of the player, rather than an independent actor. It's probably the main reason it's so commonly employed. 

In this case, Pukaboos are gophers you hit on the head with a mallet. There are probably some subtleties (Hah!) to Whack-a-Puka that I'm missing, but there was no hope I'd figure any of it out while I was trying to whap the little buggers. I just hit them and hoped. It was about as fun as these things usually are. I kinda like whack-a-mole games myself but I can see why some people don't. I don't remember making all that many Stars, either but it wasn't a waste of time.

Fun - B
Efficiency - B

Pukaboo Stack - By chance, Gemini has left the best 'til last. This can-shoot is a lot of fun and it's also by far the fastest way to get Stars. 

It uses a slightly odd mechanic for a shooting game. In front of you are some very traditional pyramids of cans on platforms. Your goal is knock all of them off. 

When you hit them, they roll about quite convincingly with some pretty good game physics, bumping into each other, spinning round, flipping over... I found it entertaining to watch. There's also an element of strategy involved in that you don't want to leave orphaned cans on the platforms after you remove most of the stacks because you only have six shots (And a time limit, although that never really comes into it.)

So far, so standard for a knock-down-cans game. The part where it gets weird is how you aim and fire. There's some sort of gun that swings slowly across the screen in an arc, back and forth. You can't control its speed or direction but when you hold down the left mouse button, a dotted line rises from the end of the barrel. It looks like you're using a garden hose. When you get the end of that "stream" where you want it, which is in the middle of the stack at the bottom, you just release the mouse button and a ball shoots out of the gun to hit the spot you've targeted.

It's very tactile and weirdly satisfying in the same way aiming a garden hose at something is. That sensation, coupled with the unpredictable ways the cans fall, meant I found it probably the most fun of all the games. It's just sugar on top that it's also extremely rewarding in terms of Stars. After only a little practice, I could guarantee an A result every time and pretty often it was an S. I imagine with more practice I could get it to S about 90% of the time, which makes it as efficient as the dart game but with much bigger payouts.

Fun- S
Efficiency - S

Pukaboo Stack, then, is the clear winner. If I need to farm Stars, that's where you'll find me. But I'm not at all sure I do need to farm Stars any more. Thanks to the massive rewards from the new event, I already have the boat and the plane and several thousand Stars left over. I'm not sure there's anything left in the store that I want.

There is one more game still to come. Currently greyed-out on the event program is Spooky Cookies. That's going to take place in the Haunted House, which is currently closed. When it gets patched into the game I'll try to remember to come back here and add my thoughts about it, just for the sake of completionism.

Until then, I think we're done. Go and have fun! 

Busy Doing Nothing Very Much - Life In Hethereau Goes On

 A lot has happened in Neverness To Everness since I posted about the game last Wednesday and yet nothing has really happened at all. Nothing by way of story or character progression, anyway, those being the twin pillars of the form, supposedly. 

No, everything that happened was decidedly, shall we say, horizontal. Or perhaps it was alternative. One of those ancillary lines of progress that keeps people busy without moving them up the difficulty ladder, anyway. 

Ah, yes. Difficulty. I've been playing, pretty regularly, since launch, we're just coming up to the six-month anniversary and I still have no clear idea how the vertical progression system works.

There seem to be three types of level: Character, Hunter and Appraisal. The level caps are 60 for Hunter, 7 for Appraisal and, as far as I can tell, 80 for character. Flora is currently Character Level 50, Hunter Level 46 and Appraisal Level 5. 

I think that's pretty far behind par for hours played but she was Character Level 40 until I went into the game to check some details for this post and remembered you have to do the leveling up for Character yourself by pressing a button. And she's effectively Appraiser Level 4, too. You can set it to one level lower if you want.  It makes mobs weaker (And rewards inferior...) I did it as soon as she was first allowed to, back at Appraiser Level 3 and the setting carries over every time she levels up, unless I switch it back.

See how confusing it is already? Well, it's way more confusing than that. Every last little thing has to be leveled up or Ascended or some such twaddle. I gave up thinking about it months ago, when it became obvious that none of it mattered. 

If you've been following my posts about the game, you'll have noticed I haven't been complaining much about the fights. Mostly I don't even mention them and when I do it's usually to say there weren't many or that they were quite easy. That is true. Mostly.

It's not always true. There are occasionally fights that I, theoretically, need to win just to work my way up some ladder or other and a couple have been too hard for me. I'm stuck at Tycoon Level 20 because of one of those. 

Oh yes, Tycoon Level... that's another ladder and quite an important one, at least in terms of the rewards it gives. Although I guess it's horizontal, even though it's a ladder, because it doesn't have anything specifically to do with making your character better at killing things. And that's all that really counts, right?

I had just been thinking how I probably ought to do something about getting past that speed-bump, when Hotta, out of the blue, added a direct alternative to Tycoon in the form of the Puka Membership Program. Like Tycoon, there are 45 levels and you can switch tracks between the two options at will but you can only progress one at a time.

I immediately swapped over to the PMP and now I'm Level 3 in that one. Apparently the rewards are very comparable. I imagine most people will have finished Tycoon anyway and be glad to have another 45 rungs to climb. My plan is to stick with Puka until I hit some barrier I can't clamber over and then decide which of the two is going to best reward some actual effort. If any.

While I was fiddling around, trying to figure all of this out, I spotted a few other progression systems I'd been ignoring, some of which I have literally forgotten again already, just a few hours later. I do remember one... 

I had what looked like a few dozen decorative items that I hadn't "Collected" because I'd forgotten you needed to. That had progress bars and rewards because of course it did. I collected them, filled a few bars with whatever weird xp variant it gave and got a bunch of stuff back as rewards that I probably need for some other progression mechanic. 

Also now, presumably, I have a load of furniture I can use. I'll have to go back to my house - one of my houses - or my cafe - one of my cafes - and check how that works.

Speaking of cafes, I figured out how to play the "Serving Customers Yourself" mini-game. I'd been ignoring it because if I find the idea of managing a coffee shop unappealing, you can imagine what I think about serving in one. In the end, though, I wanted the Fons and having read up on all the options it looked like the least-worst.

Sidebar: Given my active antipathy to games where you pretend to be a shopkeeper or a cook or a waiter or any kind of retailer or hospitality functionary or business person at all, really, I find it highly ironic I've ended up doing it it two games at once. At least it's mostly notional in NTE and not that important. In Nivalis it's a lot more work although I believe once you get past a certain stage your businesses mostly run themselves. In both games the part I liked best about running an eatery was going out each day to buy the supplies. It's doing anything with them afterwards that annoys me.

And guess what? Serving customers in my cafe on Moomin Street is actually fun. (It'd be even more fun if we could all dress up like Moomins. Now there's a collab waiting to happen...)

Well, it is now I can do it reliably, anyway. Not so much before I knew what I was meant to be doing. I read a few guides, upgraded the social skills of some of the characters I have working for me (Another form of progression, there.) and practiced for a bit until now I can spend all my City Stamina in about ten minutes. That gets you a million or so Fons and you only have to do it once a week so it's fine. 

At this point I think it's probably becoming obvious that the line between vertical and horizontal progression in NTE is blurred almost beyond recognition. I tend to mark everything that makes combat easier (Or harder for that matter.) as "Vertical" because that's how it used to work in the olden days but I'm not sure it makes sense any more.

For a start, I can't quite see why you need to get any better at fighting at all, now the main story quest has barely any fights and the few it does have are easy. The hard fights I've encountered all seem to have been in content required for progress in some other system, which then filters back to give non-combat rewards. 

For example, if I was able to beat the mob I can't currently manage for Tycoon Level 21, my reward would be access to Personalized License Plates for my vehicles. Since I ride a bicycle now, that's not even anything I want but even if it was, it certainly wouldn't help me kill faster. 

And, in fact, I don't really have any sense in this game that killing mobs is that important anyway. I go hours and hours without killing anything and even when I do it's purely by choice. Combat seems almost like an optional mini-game now.

What I've mostly been doing for the last few sessions is trying to win enough Puka Stars on the sideshows to buy first a boat and then a glider. At least, that's what I was doing until Hotta dumped a whole, new progression system into the game, based around doing everything there is to do in Pukaland and made it give retrospective credit. 

I'd already made enough under my own efforts to buy the boat but just claiming all the new rewards I'd  earned by doing it gave me more than enough Stars for the glider. (It's fricken' huge, by the way!) After that, I went through all the various tick-boxes in the new event and crossed off as many as I could, without actually putting myself out, of course, and that was most of them, so I have even more Stars now.

It reminds me of 999 Nights except it's much faster. Where completion there took me a couple of weeks, Pukaland looks like it might take less than half as long. There are a few pesky "S-Class" wins on some of the sideshows that could be problematic but I'm not sure I'll bother trying to finish the whole thing just for the sake of it. If those don't happen naturally I'll just forget about them.

And now, because I like lists, I'm going to run through all the sideshows and attractions and give my reviews of them, with comments on how easy it is to earn Stars. There are videos all over YouTube doing that but none of the ones I've seen did I find very helpful so I can't do much worse.

It's going to make this post very long if I just go straight into it, though, so I'm going to make it into a post of it's own. It's only fair - that is what I sat down to write about in the first place! 

I might do it right away or I might leave it till tomorrow. 

A cliffhanger ending! How about that?

Postcards From Pukaland

 In what seems like it might be an attempt to break the world record for widest range of content in a single drop, the same update that brought a harrowing version of the Salem Witch Trials to Neverness To Everness also saw the opening of Hethereau's candy-themed amusement park, the unfortunately but probably accurately-named Pukaland. 

As far as I can tell, Puka is Hethereau's answer to Haribo, not that that's a question anyone ever needed to ask. The theme park, named for the brand of tooth-destroying sweets sold all over the city, has been standing, empty and shuttered, on a promontory to the south-east of the city ever since the game began. Now, after a major redesign, it's finally open.

If the latest update took us on a tour from tragic to trivial with this latest update, it's not as if Hotta just bundled the two together without thinking about the friction. It's more as though they meant to rub up against each other to make some kind of abrasive point. At least, I found it hard to miss the subtext, when "The Witch" ended and a new storyline started right away, taking the Appraiser and Blackbird straight to the fairground.

At first I thought it was nothing more than a charming opportunity for the two of them to decompress after their traumatic experiences in the nested Anomalous Realms, and to a large extent that's indeed what it is, but as the short storyline developed, I couldn't help feeling there was a little more to it than that. 

I'd go into detail but unfortunately, I didn't document exactly what happened while I was playing and now, as is becoming annoyingly common with NTE, when I go online to refresh my memory, I find no-one else has posted a walkthrough I can crib from. 

I can't even find a video on YouTube where someone plays through it all, although there must be about a gazillion rating the rides and telling you how best to exploit them for the new currency. It's almost like no-one gives a damn about the story.

I'll just have to do the precis from memory. It oughtn't to be too hard. I played through some of it last night and the rest this morning. Even my memory's not that bad. Do feel free to correct any errors or add anything I've forgotten in the comments, though.

It's not like it's a lot to remember, anyway. The storyline part probably didn't take me more than fifteen or twenty minutes. The rest of the couple of hours in Pukaland, I spent gawping and taking pictures. And going on the rides, of course.

The whole thing begins with some story on Bagel about urban legends. Apparently, mysterious shadows, doors to other worlds and similar apparitions have been seen at Pukaland since it opened, often showing up after some specific trigger, like taking photos in a precise spot or staying on a ride for a particular number of times.

 

The Appraiser and Blackbird begin by visiting one of the people who posted about their experiences and having talked to her, agree to go check it out for themselves. The Appraiser, naturally, figures there may be some Anomaly behind it which, honestly, sounds like the Occam's Razor explanation for any odd, unexplained activity in the city.

Flora agrees to meet Blackbird at the gates but when she gets there Blackbird is already feeling a little overwhelmed, as well she might. Pukaland is busy. 

It looks like the park's off to a great start. The wide avenues are teeming with excited visitors. It's busy day and night, in fact. I stayed there all the way through a full day-night cycle and apart from the sun going down and the lights coming on, you'd hardly know the difference. Everything's open 24-7, in the way of video game worlds and, while I thought I noticed a slight reduction in numbers in the small hours, there's more than enough business to justify the added overhead in staffing costs.

Flora uses her Esper ability to sense anomalies but finds nothing. Blackbird has no more luck with her divination. The place seems to be no more than just what it looks like: a harmless entertainment complex.  

They explore the park, looking for anything out of place and trying to replicate the kinds of events they read about on Bagel. Flora takes a picture of Blackbird, waving to her from the supposed one of the supposed hot-spots but no strange shadows appear in the photograph. The two of them talk to some other customers, one of whom suggests inexplicable things often appear in the background of such images but after they all have another look, no-one can see anything.

One couple Flora and Blackbird interview makes the point that even though they live in a city famous for its Anomalies, they've never actually encountered one. That theme recurs in other conversations, reminding us that although all the characters we, the players, usually interact with have plenty of hands-on experience with these bizarre and sometimes terrifying entities, for many people living ordinary lives, all they know about them is what they see on social media.

They ride the big wheel thirteen times, another reported trigger, but nothing happens. They explore the hedge maze (Oddly called a "Flora Maze" in the game, which amused me and must have come as a surprise to Flora herself.) where strange things are supposed to occur quite reliably but again they see nothing out of the ordinary.

Eventually Blackbird and the Appraiser decide there's nothing to the rumors but as they're about to leave, they spot a couple of visitors acting strangely. Being the responsible citizens they are, they ask the two what they're up to. I mean, I wouldn't, I'd mind my own business, but then I'm not a Witch or a secret government agent...

It turns out the two suspicious strangers are influencers on Bagel. They've also heard about the urban legend rumors and, like our heroes, have come to see if they can find out what's going on. Unlike Flora and Blackbird, though, having struck out, they've decided to fake some evidence so they can give their followers something to get excited about.

Blackbird is very put out by this, being the innocent shut-in she is. Let's not forget, almost her only knowledge and understanding of the outside world over the past couple of hundred years has come from watching a screen. The Appraiser, more worldly, isn't shocked but she gently suggests to the two would-be deceivers that it might be better to let their fans know that what they're showing them isn't really real.

And that's about the end of it. It's a small, gentle story but it comes with a moral. The whole thing is undoubtedly a commentary on social media and the responsibility it brings to be truthful and transparent. It takes a position on conspiracy theories and it's agin' 'em. The more NTE I play, the more lessons it tries to teach me. 

Having tried and failed to find any public account of the storyline I just attempted to recreate from memory, I have to wonder who's listening. As far as I can tell, the main interest most people using social media have in Pukaland lies in telling others how to get in and out of it as fast as possible with the highest rewards for the lowest level of effort.

Which is a shame because Pukaland is amazing. It's a huge area, the size of a whole city district, and it's teeming with things to do and see. It's not only that there'ssomething to do around every corner, on every avenue and plaza, but there are hundreds of NPCs there with you, doing it too. The illusion of an actual place filled with real activity is more than impressive. 

As for the games and rides, there's plenty of variety, something for everyone. I played darts, which I very much enjoyed and shot at plushies, which was fun, too. I rode the Ferris Wheel and the Merry-Go-Round, got lost in the maze and hurtled around on the roller coaster and all that scarcely scraped the surface of what there is to do.

I wanted to go into the Fun House, which looked like it would be a hoot, but it was closed for renovations. The middle-aged man throwing up outside was likely the clue things weren't quite as they should be in there. I hear there's also a balloon ride that takes you higher above Hethereau even than the Skytower. I'd very much like to try that.

Trust me, I'll be back. I skimmed a reddit thread where redditors were being as cynical and dismissive about the rides and activities as you'd expect but for once I think their cynicism is misplaced. On first impressions, I'd say Pukaland is as good a collection of mini games as I've seen anywhere.

Sure, some of them might not be as polished as you'd get in a full game dedicated to such things but these are throwaway activities in a game that has a million other things going on. Granted, they'll presumably be permanent additions to the game but no-one's expecting any of this to become anyone's full-time gaming habit. It's an add-on and a very impressive one it is, too.

From what I've seen so far, many of the games and rides justify their existence purely in respect of the fun they offer in the moment but the rewards you get for doing them aren't at all bad, either. The entry fee in Fons for each activity is low, the number of Puka Tickets you can win is generous and the range of activities ought to have something to suit everyone. 

I went to one of the booths where you can redeem your tickets for prizes, just to see what was on offer, and I was quite impressed with what was on offer there. The prices aren't too high for a start. I already had enough for a few things but looking through the options I soon found something worth saving up for - a boat!

The boat, which from the description looks like it can be substantially upgraded, and the glider that looks like a biplane are both on my wishlist now. The former costs 10k tickets for the basic model, the latter just half of that. I'd already earned 1300 tickets in less than half an hour so both sound eminently doable.

I'll probably have do what's needed to get the rest before the next content drop though. As 999 Nights proved, no matter how engaging, satisfying and enjoyable a new addition to the game can seem when it arrives, as soon as the next update comes, it's all but forgotten. 

How long Hotta can keep pumping out content at this rate and how long it will continue to engage players if they do is an unknown quantity but my worry is that they'll be caught in a Catch 22 whatever happens. If they fail to keep up the pace, players will call it a "Daed Game" and  move on but if they succeed, those same players will take the flood of new content for granted, expect it never to end. burn through it in no time and then complain it's not enough. As players, we often talk about the grind but it probably feels just as much like a treadmill on the other side of the screen.

That's about all I have to say for now but since every story in Hethereau comes with a moral, I'll add one for this post, too.

Enjoy it while you can.