Ocean’s Heart

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Ocean’s Heart is a top-down 16-bit adventure game in the style of A Link to the Past or The Minish Cap. You play as Tilia, the daughter of a former soldier who manages a tavern on a small island. After the island is attacked by pirates, Tilia’s father sails away to chase them down. He doesn’t return, so Tilia leaves the village to look for him.  

Ocean’s Heart is set on an archipelago of interconnected islands. Most of the map can be navigated on foot, while sailing serves as a form of fast travel. The archipelago is densely populated, with multiple large cities and smaller towns, but it’s also filled with beautiful green spaces. The primary biome of the islands is “forest,” but there’s an incredible amount of diversity within this biome, from alpine pine forests to leafy old-growth oak forests to swampy mangrove forests.

The green spaces of Ocean’s Heart are gorgeous, and the pixel art is a true feast for the eyes.

When I was a kid, I remember being disappointed by the 3D graphics of the N64 and the PlayStation. Now I find the visual style of games like Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII to be charming, but for a long time (until there were better alternatives) I thought the blocky polygons and difficult-to-read environments of “next gen” games looked like garbage. I kept thinking that what I really wanted was for developers to use next-gen technology to make pixel art more polished, intricate, and interactive.

Ocean’s Heart is exactly the sort of game I wanted. Flowers and grass rustle in the wind, falling leaves drift across the screen, and birds take flight as you approach. The overworld map is dense with interaction points, all of which are visually signaled without being obtrusive. The landscape is also dense with scenery that does nothing but add magic and wonder to the environment. Towns and cities are filled with uniquely designed stores and characters, and each center of population has its own distinct visual character.

Even aside from the graphics, Ocean’s Heart is a lovely game. Although it doesn’t disrupt the basic Legend of Zelda gameplay formula, the way Ocean’s Heart structures and populates its world is extremely well executed. Unlike many Zelda-style games, Ocean’s Heart features an excellent balance between gameplay and written text. The dialog offered by the NPCs is substantial, and the player can interact with all manner of books, bookshelves, maps, paintings, documents lying on desks, and so on. Very little of this text is necessary to understanding the game’s story, but it makes the world feel like a living place that exists independently of Tilia and her quest.

The menu screen of Ocean’s Heart offers modern ease-of-use concessions, from the option to save the game at any time to a labeled map to a list of sidequests. Many titles seeking to capture a retro feel – Tunic springs immediately to mind – seem to expect the player to engage with the game through the medium of an online walkthrough, but Ocean’s Heart is entirely self-contained. The player has a great deal of freedom to move across the archipelago, but it’s difficult to become lost. The confidence derived from such a well-curated experience makes exploration all the more enjoyable.

As in any Zelda-style game, Ocean’s Heart contains about half a dozen mandatory dungeons. These dungeons have no maps, but they’re laid out in a way that feels easy to navigate and speaks to thoughtful game design. Careful exploration of the world will reveal another dozen optional dungeons with more specialized themes. My favorite of these optional “dungeons” was an entire Mediterranean-themed island with its own fully populated town of cafés and street musicians and people sitting on terraces while drinking and enjoying the sea breeze.

Ocean’s Heart comes equipped with an optional hard mode that you can trigger early on and reverse any time you want, but the default level of difficulty is well balanced. You don’t have much health at first, and healing items are extremely limited. More than anything else, this early-game difficulty seems intended to keep players on the critical path. As you power up Tilia and her sword through various collectables scattered throughout the world, exploration becomes more comfortable. Many players may have to resign themselves to dying several times at the beginning of Ocean’s Heart, but the difficulty curve balances out about an hour or two into the game’s playtime, which is roughly eight to ten hours.  

I haven’t encountered any discussion of Ocean’s Heart in the Legend of Zelda fan community, so I was surprised to learn that it was originally released in January 2021. I’m amazed that I hadn’t heard of it before I saw it on sale on the Nintendo Switch store, because this game is really good. The gameplay is solid, the writing is fun, and the beautiful pixel art is everything I ever wanted. Ocean’s Heart is also inexpensive and accessible to players of all skill levels, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s up for a chill and rewarding island adventure.

Good Reads from 2022

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Big Press Graphic Novel:
Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas (HarperCollins Publishers)

Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas’s graphic novel Squire is a low fantasy coming-of-age story about teenage recruits to an imperial army supposedly intent on “preserving the peace” of an arid land inhabited by different ethnic groups. We see this world through the eyes of Aiza, a fourteen-year-old from a minority ethnicity who intends to become a knight in order to gain citizenship and thereby ameliorate the poverty of her marginalized community.

Aiza’s fellow knights-in-training are a fascinating cast of characters, especially her friend Husni, who would much prefer to be a historian than a soldier and occasionally threatens to steal the show with his witty sense of humor and expressive body language. When Aiza begins training with the grizzled retired knight Doruk, the delicate layers of the story begin to unpeel as Aiza’s dream of assimilation is shattered by the realities of a collapsing empire.

Nadia Shammas’s writing is powerful and nuanced, and Sara Alfageeh’s art builds a world beautifully inspired by our own. Adrienne Resha’s review of Squire on Women Write About Comics unpacks the historical and contemporary cultural references behind the Middle Eastern and Arab-American inspirations of the graphic novel, and you can check out a few preview pages on the artist’s website.

Small Press Comic Anthology:
Shades of Fear, edited by Ashanti Fortson & Allison O’Toole (Balustrade Press)

Ashanti Fortson and Allison O’Toole’s Shades of Fear anthology collects ten short horror comics themed according to the strong use of a single color. The artwork is nothing short of spectacular, offering the reader both dazzling beauty and horrific imagery. As befitting the rich banquets of color, many of the stories share the theme of being devoured, either metaphorically through toxic relationships and generational trauma – or quite literally.

My favorite piece is Mar Julia’s “Bellies,” a work of poetic yet intense body horror about an order of immortal priestesses who dine well so that they may endow themselves with the fortitude necessary to make appropriate sacrifices to a (mercifully) unseen deity. The narrative depth of every short comic in the anthology recalls the gothic masterpieces of Emily Carroll, and I’ve often found myself returning to Shades of Fear to dig deeper for creative inspiration and visceral chills.

Manga:
Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow by Toranosuke Shimada (Seven Seas)

Toranosuke Shimada’s Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow is a one-volume graphic novel that begins in the near future and spans many hundreds of years of cosmic time. The manga’s ambitious narrative is pieced together from smaller and more intimate stories about the lives of individual robots and their human companions. Shimada is not concerned with whether robots have sapience; rather, these stories take the dignity and legal rights of artificial intelligence for granted in order to ask questions about what personal happiness might look like should “humanity” be separated from its current embodiment.

Shimada’s artwork is deceptively simple and allows the reader ample space to appreciate the timelessness of each character’s story even as the world around them changes. Despite the gaps between chapters, I found it profoundly moving when the narrative threads began to connect toward the end of the manga. Robo Sapiens contains a number of subtle references to the pioneering work of Osamu Tezuka, but Shimada’s speculation on a posthuman future brings a fresh and nuanced perspective to familiar tropes.

Fiction:
Idol, Burning by Rin Usami (HarperCollins Publishers)

Rin Usami’s Idol, Burning is only 115 pages long, but it’s a whirlwind ride through the psychology of boy band fandom. The narrator is failing out of high school because the Japanese education system refuses to accommodate her learning style, and her world begins to fall apart when the pop star she idolizes becomes the target of social media discourse. Usami is unflinching in her portrayal of online fandom cultures, and she’s refreshingly honest about the adverse effects that flamewars can have on vulnerable people seeking support in fandom communities. It’s not always easy to read Idol, Burning, but I couldn’t put it down. 

The English translation of the book includes short essays by the author and her translator, as well as statements from the cover designer (surrealist photographer Delaney Allen) and the illustrator (comic artist Leslie Hung). The novel’s story stands on its own, but it’s a treat to read about the inspirations of the writers and artists who brought it to life.

Zine:
Haunts by Kaylee Rowena

I recently had the pleasure of flipping through Kaylee Rowena’s zine Haunts, which collects the American comic artist’s illustrations of haunted houses. I especially appreciate the epilogue, which takes the form of a short essay about houses and hauntings and memory. It’s a fantastic piece of writing, and Rowena acknowledges the influence of a YouTube video called “Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House” by the video game critic Jacob Geller. 

This video discusses the trope of the haunted house through the two games mentioned in the title, but it has deeper cultural resonance and doesn’t require any prior knowledge. It’s also my favorite type of video essay: it’s only twenty minutes long, it has subtitles, and it’s not necessary to watch the video footage if you just want to listen to the audio. I’ve been feeling a bit more homebound since the weather has gotten colder, and the combination of Rowena’s colorful art and Geller’s video essay have helped me appreciate the magic and mystery of walls that continue upright and doors that remain sensibly shut.

Video Game:
Stray, developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive

You may have seen your favorite artists posting tributes to the game Stray, which was released in July by Annapurna Interactive, a publisher that specializes in unique and stylish narrative games. The game’s website describes it as “a third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed, neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity,” but really it’s about hope and friendship. The story is divided into twelve chapters that alternate between nonviolent 3D platforming segments and more text-based exploration segments, the combination of which provide a fun and interesting mix of narrative elements. Stray is accessible to a diverse range of gamers, and the rich and detailed visual splendor of the posthuman cityscape will be a delight to fans of cyberpunk comics and manga.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

All of these mini-reviews were originally published as part of the monthly “WWACommendations” roundtables on the website Women Write About Comics. You can find these posts on the WWAC website (here) and follow WWAC on Twitter (here).

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is half sci-fi visual novel and half real-time tower defense tactics game with a moderately robust system of mecha customization. It’s an amazing work of nonlinear digital storytelling, but it’s also about 25 hours long and difficult to talk about without spoiling certain elements of the plot. I’m therefore going to spoil a few small bits of the game’s premise, which I hope will make this review easier to follow.

To simplify the story significantly, 13 Sentinels is about teenage mecha pilots from different decades in modern Japan. Although the timeline stretches from 1945 to 2188, the primary setting of the game is an urban high school in the year 1985. Time travel is introduced into the story fairly early on, but it gradually becomes apparent that the various pilots’ movements between decades may not be time travel at all. In addition, a few of the characters are very concerned with “loops,” which seem to be connected to the different “generations” of mecha you control during the tower-defense sequences.

Your job, as the player, is twofold. First, you need to defend the city during a multi-stage final battle against invading alien mecha; and second, you need to follow each of the thirteen characters’ stories in order to figure out how they got to the point at which the final battle begins.

The tactics battles are short and linear, and you can repeat battles to grind for experience or meet certain challenge conditions. You can choose the difficulty level for these battles, which end in victory automatically if the tower does not fall within the time limit. The visual presentation of the battles is somewhat simplistic and occasionally confusing, but they’re easy to cheese through multi-target long-range missiles.

Personally speaking, I’m not big into tower defense tactics, but I found the mecha battles in 13 Sentinels to be extremely addictive. If you, like me, are interested primarily in the narrative aspects of the game, I would say not to worry too much about the mecha battles. They’re easy and fun!

Meanwhile, the visual novel portion of the game plays out in a series of roughly five-minute segments. There are thirteen viewpoint characters, and each character’s story is divided into six to eight episodes. Although some of the episodes have conditions that need to be met before they’re unlocked, you can switch between characters and play through the episodes in whatever order you like. You can also complete a lot of the story without doing the mecha battles, and vice versa.    

The story segments are set up like a 2.5D (Paper Mario style) adventure game in which you navigate between connected screens while talking to NPCs. Most of these story segments are linear, by which I mean that they necessitate specific actions performed in a specific order. Each character’s story has its own style of gameplay-adjacent narration, and certain segments of two of the characters (Juro Kurabe and Yuki Takamiya) might necessitate using a walkthrough. For the most part, though, each story episode is fairly intuitive and self-explanatory, and the player can sit back and enjoy the art and writing and voice acting without having to worry about making decisions.  

Although each individual battle and story episode is relatively short, there are a lot of them in aggregate, and the game will take at least twenty hours to finish. Unfortunately, you have no control over the opening tutorial sequence, which takes about an hour to complete. Because this tutorial takes so long, I think it’s important to let people going into 13 Sentinels know that it doesn’t reflect the content of the vast majority of the game.

I recently listened to a discussion of 13 Sentinels in which two people who’d played the game attempted to explain it to a larger group, and one of them made an embarrassed comment about “anime tropes.” I think it’s worth discussing these tropes (without spoilers), as they appear primarily in the opening tutorial and may turn off many players to an otherwise excellent game.

The first anime trope is fanservice, by which I mean “male gaze anime pedo bullshit.” For whatever reason, this fanservice is frontloaded into the tutorial and then more or less disappears. In other words, it’s a little gross at the beginning, but then it stops being an issue. It’s kind of like the opening of Final Fantasy XII, where you have to get intimately acquainted with the dimples in Penelo’s ass and watch Fran straddle a flying motorcycle in lingerie before the game drops the fanservice pretense and gets down to the business of telling a story in which the characters aren’t sexualized at all.

The second anime trope is basic netto uyoku brainrot. This is concentrated at the beginning of one character’s story but then stops being an issue. There’s not much to say about this, save that it’s fairly common in a lot of anime-adjacent work that came out of Japan in the late 2010s, and that it will probably go over the heads of most people playing the game in English. I’m generally sensitive to this sort of thing, but it’s such a minor part of the overall story that it was easy to roll my eyes and not be bothered by it. Also, that character’s storyline gets much better later in the game.

The third anime trope is “giant mecha that can only be piloted by teenagers in high school.” As someone who generally dislikes this trope, what I would say is that the diegetic explanation is very good, and that the narrative payoff is a lot of fun. The explanation and payoff don’t happen until late in the game, but they’re worth suspending disbelief for.  

In a lot of ways, 13 Sentinels has strong Final Fantasy VIII vibes, and it’s good to remind people (mainly myself) that Final Fantasy VIII was actually a really smart and interesting game. The conceit of all the characters being in high school is admittedly silly, but the “daily life” nonsense at the beginning of the game exists primarily to serve as a contrast for what you learn about the story as it progresses.

I don’t want to say that anyone’s enjoyment of 13 Sentinels will be dependent on their tolerance for anime tropes, but what I would say is that you might need to be patient with the game during the first hour. Like any other JRPG, 13 Sentinels gets so much better once you’re free from the mandatory tutorial.

Given that 13 Sentinels levies a tax of an hour of your life before you’re allowed to start the game in earnest, I want to try to explain why the experience of playing it is worth the price of admission.  

To begin with, 13 Sentinels is a gorgeous game. The character designs are gorgeous. The backgrounds are gorgeous. The lighting effects are gorgeous. The animation is limited, but it’s gorgeous as well. Every tiny detail is just so incredibly gorgeous, and the game constantly reveals new details.

I also appreciate that 13 Sentinels isn’t so much a traditional visual novel as it is a nonviolent adventure game. I love this style of interactive storytelling, and I love to see it done with a proper budget. You don’t just passively watch the characters and look at all the gorgeous art; you get to move through the lushly detailed environments and interact with them using standard JRPG mechanics that help guide you through the story.

While the writing doesn’t draw attention to itself at the level of its prose, it’s a marvel how everything comes together in bits and pieces in a way that makes perfect sense. Some character episodes must be unlocked, so there are a few gates regulating how much the player knows at any given time, but 13 Sentinels showcases nonlinear storytelling at its best.

The game also features a good mix of subgenres. Some characters are normal high school students who gradually get sucked into the larger story, while other characters begin right in the middle of a hardcore sci-fi action movie. Some of the characters have love stories, while others have murder stories. A surprising number of the characters’ stories look deeply into ontological definitions of humanity. Meanwhile, there are some characters you don’t get to play as, an aspect of narrative gameplay that generates its own set of themes and questions.

If you get bored with one character, you can always switch to another. All of the stories are connected, so you might uncover something that causes you to view the formerly boring character in a different light. Some of the characters resonated more strongly with my own interests while others left me a bit cold, but all of the characters have fully realized narrative arcs that somehow manage to keep developing deep into the endgame.

I can’t say too much about the game without spoiling it, but I was constantly dazzled by the storytelling. When I say that the narrative payoff of the anime tropes is worth the initial silliness, I mean it – the ending of 13 Sentinels feels satisfying and well-earned.

Because it’s divided into bite-sized chunks, 13 Sentinels is a great portable handheld game, and it’s perfect for the Nintendo Switch. Its load times are almost nonexistent, so it’s easy to pick up and put down and pick back up again. I gradually played 13 Sentinels over the course of about two months, but I imagine the game’s structure would make it a lot of fun for people who prefer to binge stories.

So, despite the slog of the opening tutorial, I’d definitely recommend 13 Sentinels if you’re interested in a smart and fun sci-story that’s also a smart and fun game.

Ground Down

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Ground Down
https://inverts.itch.io/ground-down

Ground Down is a short botanical horror story presented in the form of a Twine game. The player is occasionally offered choices concerning how to proceed, but there’s only one ending. Depending on your choices and your reading speed, I’d say Ground Down takes about ten to twenty minutes to finish.

You play as a young farmer whose grandmother has just passed away, leaving you the farm you’ve grown up on. You also have your grief, a house full of mementos, and debts to pay. On top of that, you’ve started to grind your teeth, but you have neither the time nor the money to visit a dentist.

I should say that, if you’re unusually squeamish about teeth, you might want to give this game a pass.

Personally speaking, I’m a little squeamish about teeth and dental pain in general, but I very much enjoyed this game. I felt some mild discomfort at the beginning, but the way the theme of “teeth as a symbol of agency” comes back at the end of the story is nothing short of brilliant.

The writing of Ground Down is fantastic in general. Each sentence is perfectly constructed, and each word is chosen with care. There’s a Raymond Carver feel of resonant simplicity to the prose, which is a pleasure to read and to reflect on. The gradual build of the narrative tension is subtle but palpable, and the ending is gorgeously cathartic.

The creator describes Ground Down as a “kinetic novel,” and there’s an interesting rhythm to the text, which sometimes speeds up and slows down. The choices you can and can’t make are interesting as well. Although your choices don’t affect the ending, they’ll color your understanding of what happens.

It’s also worth noting that the Century Gothic font is easy to read, and the contrast between the dark gray background and the light gray text is easy on the eyes, especially if you’re playing the game on your phone. The ambient background music, Kevin MacLeod’s “Decline,” is perfect.

Really, everything about Ground Down is perfect. I played the game twice, and I’m looking forward to playing it again soon. The story’s theme of protecting the roots of your identity from the erosion of late-stage capitalism resonated with me, and the imagery is delicious. And, as a fun bonus, you can name and pet your hen!

Spun Stories Folk Horror Anthology

~ Kathryn

I’m honored to have a piece appearing in Spun Stories, the first anthology of short fiction released by Myth & Lore magazine. My folk horror story, “The Cow-Headed Boy,” is about an idealistic young teacher who accepts a position in a village in rural Pennsylvania at the turn of the twentieth century. Many of the village’s Yuletide traditions are quaint and charming, but some are a bit more sinister. Despite my general lack of interest in anything related to Christmas, I ended up doing a lot of research into Germanic pagan solstice traditions, and I hopefully managed to channel a bit of H.P. Lovecraft in the process.     

If you’re interested, you can preorder a copy of the Spun Stories anthology (here), and you can follow Myth & Lore magazine on Twitter (here) and on Instagram (here). I also want to give a shout-out to the editor, a talented artist who goes above and beyond in promoting authors while networking with the indie horror community. If you’re interested in folk horror, it’s definitely worth following Myth & Lore on social media – and perhaps even submitting your own work!

The Minish Cap

~ Kathryn

Nintendo recently released The Minish Cap on the Game Boy Advance virtual console included with its Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription service. This service costs $50 a year, and you have to pay the annual fee all at once. As a reminder: It is always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.

The Minish Cap came out around the same time as The Wind Waker, and it translates a lot of The Wind Waker’s characters and enemy designs into a 16-bit pixel aesthetic modeled on A Link to the Past. As a Zelda game, the structure of The Minish Cap is very conventional: There are five themed dungeons in five themed zones. You must beat these dungeons in order, as the item you find in each dungeon allows you to access more of the world. All of the dungeons are well-designed, and it’s fun to navigate each of the five zones.

To me, there are three things that make The Minish Cap special. The first is a core game mechanic that’s brilliant and magical; the second is a minor game mechanic I hate; and the third is the game’s lighthearted tone.

The main conceit of The Minish Cap is that Link is able to shrink down to the size of the Minish, tiny little mouse-elves who live in adorable mushroom houses, hollowed-out books, and so on. The Minish spaces in the game are a Studio Ghibli fantasy on par with The Secret World of Arrietty, and there are a number of fun navigation puzzles that require Link to alternate between human size and Minish size. This is especially enjoyable during an item quest that requires you to return three books to the library, which necessitates navigating the central hub of Hyrule Castle Town at Minish size.

Unfortunately, the Minish are obsessed with fusing kinstones. A kinstone is a broken medallion, and several dozen NPCs are willing to connect their half of a kinstone with a matching half in your possession. A successful fusion will result in a small change somewhere in the world – a merchant will come to Castle Town, a treasure chest will appear in a cave, or a special golden monster will appear in the field. These fusions are mostly random, as are the kinstones you find. All of the game’s sidequests (if you can even call them that) are connected to kinstone fusions, and the randomness of the fusions can make these sidequests infuriating. Thankfully, none of the sidequests is necessary, as The Minish Cap is easy enough to play with just the bare minimum of resources.

I imagine that most players will probably think of successful kinstone fusions as fun bonuses, but a Zelda game without sidequests can feel a little empty. In addition, because many of these fusions are made with random NPCs at seemingly random points in the game, none of the sidequests is connected to a narrative.

This lack of substance and specificity is tied to the lighthearted tone of The Minish Cap, which doesn’t have much of a story. The King of Hyrule has been possessed by an evil Minish wizard named Vaati, who turns Princess Zelda to stone during the first ten minutes of the game. Because only children are pure-hearted enough to see the Minish, only Link can save Zelda. Meanwhile, none of the adults care about any of this.

Aside from Zelda and your trusty talking hat Ezlo (who has also been transformed by Vaati), nothing bad happens to anyone in the game. In fact, everyone is quite happy.

In The Wind Waker, the disconnect between the carefree world of the Great Sea and the importance of Link’s quest is a major thematic element of the story. The only person living on the Great Sea who cares about Hyrule is Ganondorf, and the only reason he cares is because he’s been woefully displaced in time. The fact that no one except the King of Red Lions understands Link’s quest emphasizes The Wind Waker’s tone of loneliness, and this is why it’s so emotionally impactful when Link finds someone who appreciates the stakes of what he’s trying to accomplish and volunteers to help.

Meanwhile, in The Minish Cap, Hyrule is densely populated by Hylians and Minish who seem to be doing just fine, even without a government. Aside from poor Zelda, everyone is living their best life, and no one needs your help. I can’t overemphasize that there is not a single element of darkness in this game, which has no narrative tension and very little forward momentum.

A fandom friend who recently played The Minish Cap for the first time said that this is the game they’d recommend to first-time Legend of Zelda players, and I can understand where they’re coming from. The Minish Cap is about as conventional as you can get. Overall, it’s really fun, and neither its combat nor its puzzles are difficult.

Unfortunately, the kinstone fusion sidequests can be hideously annoying, and the game’s “safe for children” cutesy tone makes the world and its story seem unimportant and forgettable. The Minish Cap feels like it was created for casual players, and your mileage may vary on how much you appreciate this.

In the end, The Minish Cap is still a great 8/10 game that’s very much worth playing, but it’s on an entirely different level than A Link Between Worlds, which perfected the top-down 2D Zelda formula while also featuring excellent writing and interesting design work. Given its limitations, I think The Minish Cap will probably appeal most strongly to 16-bit retro game fans, as well as its actual target demographic of ten-year-old kids.

Tears of the Kingdom Leaks and Spoiler Culture

~ Kathryn

This past Sunday, someone on Reddit posted a link to a page-by-page series of photos of the (original Japanese) artbook that comes included with the special edition of Tears of the Kingdom. Since then, a lot of big-name fandom artists have been sharing public pledges that they won’t post any art that contains spoilers. I appreciate their stance, but I’d like to offer my own take – not on the spoilers themselves, but on the culture of corporate secrecy surrounding “spoilers.”

Before anything, I should admit that I looked at the leaked pages. They’re neat! There are a few new interesting character designs, but no story spoilers. The text is little more than design notes. “This clasp connects the two sides of her hairband,” that sort of thing.

I actually wasn’t all that impressed by the Tears of the Kingdom trailers, which make the game seem like a hot mess of heterogeneous elements that don’t fit together. That being said, some of the new character designs are really exciting! I’m not a fan of video game trailers to begin with, as they tend to target action-oriented fourteen-year-old boys. Meanwhile, the Tears of the Kingdom concept artwork is much more specific and interesting, and I think it invites a much broader and more diverse range of people who play games.

To put it bluntly: I didn’t like the trailers, but the leaked concept art sold me on this game.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the refusal of media companies to put out nothing more than one or two teaser trailers in advance of a big release is a relatively recent practice. Before Disney bought Marvel in 2009, it was common to share all sorts of concept art, cast interviews, behind-the-scenes set photos, and so on. One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a video game fan in the 1990s and 2000s was checking out all the cool pre-release content in magazines and on official websites. In my experience, these little teaser “spoilers” aren’t going to diminish anyone’s enjoyment. Quite the opposite, in fact!

In addition, I think it’s important to put this leak into the context of Nintendo posting a major Direct video saying that they would open preorders for a special edition, only for the extremely limited stock to be almost instantaneously bought out by scalper bots, as Nintendo’s marketing people must have known it would be. Putting the $130 special edition aside, just a regular download of Tears of the Kingdom costs $70, which is quite hefty. I’m not inclined to take Nintendo’s side in any of this, nor am I amused by their weird Disneyesque attempts to create a kind of sacred space around a video game release to inspire “fear of missing out” anxieties.

Of course, I can understand the mindset of someone who wants to go into a game completely “unspoiled,” but you have to wonder. How good can a game (or movie) be if the entire experience of enjoying it would be ruined by knowing more about it?

My final reaction to the conversation surrounding this leak is rooted in my frustration with the prevailing culture of image-based social media. It makes sense for big-name professional artists with large followings to say that they’re not going to post “spoilers.” I understand that having an active online audience of tens of thousands of people necessitates certain precautions against discourse and harassment! Still, that experience is limited to a relatively tiny percentage of creatives.

The tail of social media interest in any given media release is a week at most. If you’re an artist with a low-to-mid-range following, and you can post your work within the first three to five days of a release, this translates to a difference between your post getting 3,000 notes and it getting maybe 300 if you’re lucky. If you’re an absolute amateur like me, this is a difference between getting 3,000 notes and maybe getting 30.

I can’t even begin to explain how intense the pressure to drop everything and produce work quickly is. Intense, and unpleasant. It’s disheartening to see work that was posted maybe two days earlier get an exponentially higher amount of positive feedback simply because of the timing of the post. Essentially: if you’re unable to produce quality work within a magic window, it can feel as though your work doesn’t matter.

( By the way, if your response is “you should create art for yourself,” please go sit in the corner and think about why an aspiring or early-career artist might need or appreciate support. )

Meanwhile, if an artist has more concept art and other development material to work with, they can take their time and create good work on their own schedule so that it’s ready to go when the magic window opens. Personally speaking, I think being able to enjoy the process of making art instead of operating on an unhinged crunch schedule is much healthier, much more sustainable, and a lot more fun.

So, all things considered, maybe being able to access a wider range of information about a game before it releases is kind of nice, actually.

The Eyes of Hyrule Zine Preview

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that preorders are open for The Eyes of Hyrule, a Legend of Zelda fanzine devoted to the Sheikah. The zine’s Carrd is (here), and you can check out more previews on its Twitter account (here).

There’s a lot of talent involved in this project, and the mods have been totally on the ball at keeping everything organized for the zine, which is expected to ship out this summer. It’s always a pleasure to be part of a project where everything clicks and comes together so well. Also, I might be biased, but I think the stories (and comics!) in this zine are especially interesting and unique.  

My own piece, “The Only Come Out at Night,” is a soft horror story about Kakariko Village in Ocarina of Time. It’s narrated from the perspective of Grog, the punk kid who hangs out near the entrance of the village at night. During the trading sequence necessary to acquire Biggoron’s Sword, the player can pick up hints that Grog’s story is much darker and more complicated than his initial appearance would suggest. I therefore wanted to use this character to explore the darker side of the Sheikah through the medium of a Stephen King style “peculiar little town” story. I had a lot of fun writing this piece, and I can’t wait to share it.

If you’re interested, you can preorder a copy of The Eyes of Hyrule via Bigcartel (here).

Space Trash Review on WWAC

~ Kathryn

My review of the first volume of Jenn Woodall’s lunarpunk graphic novel Space Trash has just been published on the website Women Write About Comics. Here’s an excerpt…

Una, Yuki, and Stab are three lowkey troublemakers who share a dorm room and dye each other’s hair while watching each other’s backs. The three young women mostly play by the rules until they’re challenged by a rival girl gang, the Trash Queens. Their brawl is broken up by the school’s robotic disciplinary wardens, which causes the two gangs to realize that they share something in common: a burning desire to upend a system that doesn’t serve their best interests.

You can read the full review (here), and you can follow Jenn Woodall on Twitter (here). Once again, I have nothing but gratitude and admiration for my brilliant editor, who brought a number of interesting parallels to my attention as I was thinking about how to approach this book.

Scotland

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

This is a sequel to my “Demonic Women in Fiction” comic.

I think perhaps the most amusing aspect of that comic was how much hate it got on Twitter. I actually had to lock my account for a few days because randos kept popping up and commenting with long lists of every demonic man who has ever appeared in popular culture. Those dudes don’t know me, so they would have no way of knowing this, but I am in fact very familiar with demonic men. I’m even something of a connoisseur, one might say.   

Still, I haven’t read that many m/f romance novels, so I have only recently learned about Scotland.  

I should add that I’m referencing a line from Lucky Penny, a comedy romance (graphic) novel about romance novels. Lucky Penny‘s story is a lot of fun, and the writing is fantastic.