RHYTHM BASTARD: EXPEDITION 38
No, I haven't played that game. It's on the list, and I don't think I'll get to it for a while, but fuck you, this is about me looking back.
Normally at this point I look back and be like "OH SHIT I'M GETTING OLDER!" and then last night I put this as a placeholder because I'd bring him up eventually, but looking at this picture I took with Jeff on what we called "The Gay Bridge" when I visited him this past Christmas, all that anxiety fades away.
We can handle what comes next, and there's no one else I'd rather being going through it all with.
As for Rhythm Bastard, I speed ran throughout my State Of The Bastards of yore seeing how I developed and there's something unique about how much FUN I had, but if I were to ask what I feel now, it would be "satisfied, but not content". I'm proud of what I'm making now, with the situation I'm in. I have a day job, two parents two support, I'm also looking to move in with MY BOYFRIEND sooner rather than later, but I could use some sort of guidance on what MORE I could be doing.
Not so much Rockstar Delusions, but more so, "How could I get MORE out of something I put so much time and energy in?" I panic a lot on what would happen if I couldn't do *all this* any more and who I would be with out Rhythm Bastard. I look back at the picture again, and I think back to all the good times we've had.
I do all this for the opportunities I get: to travel, to meet new people, to force myself to make new things and step out of my box, to fall in love.
Then that fucking donger Trump bombed Venezuela for oil.
MOST RECENT SONG: My Work In "The Bygones" and "Down The River's Edge"
"Down The River's Edge" is a western furry visual novel, in which you experience Javi's story as he turns from a hopeful young man into a grizzled outlaw. I also co-wrote some songs with Zack Loup.
"The Bygones" is a short drama visual novel where you view the past through the eyes of Everett Summers, the band's lead guitarist.
Still need to prep some kind of release, but the reason my productivity was shot in the latter months of the year because I had this, MFF and BOYFRIEND visit one right after the other.
For "Down The River's Edge", I worked on four songs but actually only wrote 2. Racky, the project lead, was good about keeping me and Zach efficient, because I could re-use "Cormac's Theme", the villain song, reworked to various degrees.
First was the main riff, which had to be slowed down and intimidating. Since the game is about man being imprisoned, a tambourine would make for a good sound-alike for shackles, and to add some creep factor, I just slowed a harmonic note WAAAAAAY the fuck down. I repurposed the riff with Acoustic Guitar for the "Forest Road" song.
For the "Prison Song" I just did some 12-bar blues noodling.
My lone song for The Bygones, it's a pastiche on Britpop and in game it's about the band breaking up. I was given "Popscene" by Blur and "Don't Look Back In Anger" by Oasis as inspirations. Britpop is already a subgenre that oozes cynicism and feels like it's too good for you, so before I had the full context for the song, I already had a direction.
FAVORITE SONG I MADE THIS YEAR: "R-H-Y-T-H-M"
WITH A BULLET. It's a good intro song, it teaches you how to spell my name, and MY BOYFRIEND worked on the visualizer for it. I was going for something real simple with it, so it's a blast to play, and to do visuals for.
ART POST
Since I've been doing ART now, I figured it'd be fun to make one of those art recap posts!
January through October shows the most growth, since November and December was "let me do something quick for promotion. I love that the Schmoopy Stream (yes, that's what I'm calling it) dynamic is now me and Jeff making our PNGs for each other. He makes an adorable Cid and he popped off for his work making Thrash into Daddy Auron. March and November was me rendering his work for promo stuff.
I also started offering "Bandcamp Friday" sketches, to encourage people to support me then (if you get the equivalent of my digital discography OR MORE on Bandcamp, I draw you a free 30 min drawing). I did my first YCH this year as well, and I hope to do more soon!
OTHER COOL SHIT I DID
Novembuck
See above. This and May Wolf are interesting exercises in Just Making Shit, especially since a Visual Novel has so many other disciplines you can bring in, like music (hi!), sound, art, and programming other than just writing.
It's more communal, which is what I like about the furry fandom!
Pencils Down At Megaplex
For the past couple years when I didn't have a concert at Megaplex, I did "Scratch Game" which is a take off of the game show "Match Game".
This year I also submitted "Pencils Down" which is just my take on the Game Changer Epsiode "Pencils Down".
My panel was:
-PaintedFox
-Giovanni DiMilano
-Pajammers
-Hellbreakfast
And it was a BLAST! I was a little nervous on how it would turn out or if everyone got the concept, but there was a lot of laughs, and I can't wait to do it next year.
Furry In C
I talked about this in my MFF Recap Post, but it was a window into a more "advanced" world, and brought my back to my days in high school as part of concert band.
Made "Iblis And The Burning Blade" With Jane Drolf
My contribution to Season 3 of The Adventures Of The Fox In The Fedora.
He came to me after playing Alan Wake 2, saying he wanted something akin to "Herald Of Darkness" to get some exposition across in a fun and cool as fuck way, and I feel like I delivered. At worst there was some LIGHT feedback from Fox about how names were pronounced and some lore things, but he LOVED it.
Jane Drolf is a metal singer and she is also looking to get into making music, so I brought her on as someone to play against, since it seemed like in every "scene" there were two characters that can speak to each other.
Obviously "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a huge influence, but here's my Act by Act Breakdown:
Act 1- Obviously the choral opening to "Bohemian Rhapsody". I was playing around with chord progressions on the acoustic that led to what I'd use throughout the whole song in some respect. The organ sound was something I was fiddling around with that sounded "heavenly", since these are oracles.
Act 2- METAL. This was more in Jane's wheelhouse and it was fun to play Iblis across her Death.
Act 3- This was going to be Symphonic Metal, but it ended up at best something like Yellowcard. The transition with Fox and Mia Passarella (the voice of Cassie Rascal, Fox's adventuring partner/love interest) was because I didn't know how to get to the next "act" in a smooth way, but they went along with it, and made it overall a more playful tune.
Act 4- I came up with this RIGHT after watching "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", particularly "Midnight Radio"
Act 5- I figured the best way to tie this off was some Bowie-glam. I brought the organ back to give it a little 2000s indie, with songs like "Bohemian Like You" by The Dandy Warhols and "Sequestered In Memphis" by The Hold Steady.
TREND I LIKED THE LEAST: Really Cringe Fascism
People call comparing immigrants to the Flood from Halo or trying to find Charlie Kirk's unaliver (his wife) into a True Crime podcast "Reddit-brained", but Reddit has proven itself useful, and a way for subcultures to share niche information. It's also "What google was before AI".
There's no other way to describe anything this administration is doing as anything other than "For The 'Gram/Vine/Tok/whatever", because when you've secured the bag so hard your life gets boring and everyone hates your guts, the only new capital to accumulate is social capital, because in the Attention Economy, substance matters WAY LESS than eyeballs.
Venezuela was invaded so that Twitter Psychophants can get some engagement. And oil.
The DHS posted an AI Ghibli meme of people getting deported! Every picture of Trump is AI! FAFO! Haha check out this BASED EDIT! This is what you do when you don't worry about "intrinsic worth".
One of my most vindicated takes is that the "Lives Matter" upset conservatives more than "Black".
Like, think how many big military operations are preceded with "Now they'll know why America doesn't have healthcare!".
Next time someone's being an asshole to you online, just be like "debate your worth to me. Why does your life matter." Because they have to either confront the fact that life is worth living regardless, or they just want to be the arbiter of who lives and dies. And when they start crowing about "THE LEFT WANTS YOU DEAD!" you just gotta go, "Well, you ain't much use alive"
TREND I LIKED THE MOST: "No, We Actually Don't Like You People"
Hasan Piker getting mainstream coverage despite .Zohran Mamdani winning the NYC Mayoral Election despite Islamaphobia and "why haven't you denounced Hasan Piker?". Wine Moms calling for Republican Bloodshed. Everyone who steps outside shitting on the ICE Gestapo. Trump failing with the Gen Z that voted him in. Charlie Kirk's death mocked and his wife celebrating his death with firework displays everywhere.
When your idea of power is Really Cringe Fascism, the average person isn't going to take you seriously, and yeah, when you're worried about grocery prices while tariffs make everything more expensive as a sleepy Don says "we just want oil", the whole facade falls apart, and suddenly those SCARY SOCIALISTS sound a lot more reasonable, ESPECIALLY when you have the opposition party leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries go "come on guys, just one more strongly worded letter and he'll think about maybe doing the right thing.
WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS SOONER? Aunty Donna
*cue dubstep music*
TO BE FAIR, my boyfriend has been trying to get me into them for A WHILE, but this was the year it finally took. Aunty Donna is an absurdist comedy troupe from Austrailia that usually do their sketch in themed mini-series ("1999" is about office culture, "Ripper Aussie Summer" is about, well, summer, etc.) and when I visited Jeff for Christmas, we watched their Netflix series, which does not have a second season because it was very good, and Netflix are cowards. They also managed to get some big names working with them on the series, like Weird Al Yankovic, Kristen Schall, Egg Helms, and Paul F. Tompkins.
While nowadays they work more with Grouse House, fellow Aussies, they manage to put out some brilliant shit recently, like this COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE AND ACCURATE EPISODE OF FRIENDS.
OLD GAMES OF 2025 RUNNER-UPS
Honorable Mention: Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes From Liberty City: I was going to give it to Brok The Investiagator and The Hayseed Knight for being well put together visual novels, the former for even having a beat 'em up engine that works alongside its investigation mechanics, but the "canon" endings for both involve me going far back a fair bit in between for the "best ending".
GTAIV:EFLC contains two side stories from GTAIV's main campaign that offer up an opportunity to revisit Liberty City from different angles with new mechanics, or rather, mechanics missing from IV that were in San Andreas, but it's still a welcome to my beloved NYC Expy.
5. Ratchet and Clank Series (PS2): The first game has a great story and tone, Going Commando brings the gameplay to a boil, and while Up Your Arsenal suffers from inflation, the gameplay and world for the first RaC trilogy was a blast to playthrough with virgin eyes/hands.
4. Final Fantasy IV (PC): With MTG's Final Fantasy set dropping this year, I revisited Final Fantasy's 1 and 4, the latter making the list for regularly keeping things fresh with a rotating cast and visiting the moon on a giant whale.
3. Chicken Police: Paint The Town Red (PC): The best visual novel with anthropomorphic characters this year, with stellar presentation in character design and voice acting which contributes, rather than contrasts with, a straight laced film noir tribute.
2. Cyberpunk 2077 (PC): This game is a lot more fun when you have a boyfriend gushing about all the references and all the thing he likes in your ear instead of some little bitch complaining the glitches, and can allow this fully realized, if choppy immersive sim/open world crime game to breathe.
#1 OLD GAME OF 2025: Sleeping Dogs (PC)
If Saints Row (360) is the platonic ideal of Grand Theft Auto right before IV came out, then Sleeping Dogs is the platonic idea of GTA right before V came out.
Sleeping Dogs puts you in the role of Wei Shen, an undercover cop placed within the Triad gang Sun on Yee. His loyalties get more and more tangled up with the inner workings of the gang as he gains more trust, even as all different parties within and without the gang proper start stabbing everyone in the back.
What makes the game refreshing is its emphasis on a well put together hand-to-hand combat system. It works much like the Batman Arkham series, with a heavy focus on counters and finishers, more about keeping your options open rather than hard-hitting combos. The city of Hong Kong feels a lot denser than most open world cities, with even less populated area still brimming with collectibles and encounters, so I can take a look around and marvel at the details.
Cyberpunk 2077 also offered a very dense Night City, but the car physics handle a lot better, and there's so much more greenery to look at. I wanted to play in Night City, but live in Hong Kong. Every block is dotted with at least some kind of shop or concession stand. While most only offer minor health boosts, it made sprinting through the city looking for a car or a pickup bearable.
As I'm typing this I'm very conflicted whether I should have made Cyberpunk my OLD GOTY. I think I just found Sleeping Dogs to go down easier, but in reality, they're two different games: Cyberpunk 2077 is an immersive sim wearing the skin of an open world crime game, with lots of text to read and themes to digest that, because I was playing on stream I skipped over and would have missed without my boyfriend. Sleeping Dogs is a Hong Kong action movie that I traverse an open world to get through.
It comes down to TWO BIG factors (I'm sorry Jeff I love you):
1. Steely Dan's "Reelin' In The Years" in the Karaoke bar
2. I want to be cast in the movie that Simu Liu is putting together.
NEW GAMES OF 2025 RUNNER-UPS
Honorable Mention: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 (PC): This WOULD have been #5, but there have been rumbling that it's used generative AI in it's games, albeit with questionable credibility, so as much fun as I've had with the foray into the "classic" entries I'm less familiar with (and a lot less insane to 100%), this gets a provisional mention.
5. Marvel: Cosmic Invasion (PC): Sometimes you just want some fun fluff to play with your comics-loving boyfriend and this game has plenty of fun characters and incredibly well animated pixel art to make an altogether incredible package AND IT HAS TASKMASTER!!!!
4. Assassin's Creed Shadows (PC): Could have used a lot of trimming down, but turns out this games better when you have your boyfriend gushing about Sengoku Era and Chanbara cinema in your ear instead of some white boy or morbidly obese Latinx who will never be a samurai, let alone anything, crying about Yasuke, meaning they miss out on OF ALL THINGS one of the best kisses in gaming, because Naoe and Katsuhime just fucking go for it.
3. Unbeatable (PC): Super unpolished, with significant risk softlocking between scene transitions, a LOT of circular dialogue, and a constantly shifting UI that makes dropping combos common, but with an incredible soundtrack and an heartwrenching ending that makes the game worth it, I couldn't justify putting it below a Ubisoft open world game and a Marvel sidescrolling beat-em-up.
2. Dispatch (PC): You can argue about it being a game in the strictest sense, but the Dispatching gameplay was fun, and it was refreshing to have a "water cooler game" where you can talk about your decisions with your friends, like in Telltale's The Walking Dead peak era, and while #2 might feel VERY high, it got dinged points considering I saw so much sexy Sonar bara fanart only to realize that he was voiced by MoistCritikal.
#1 NEW GAME OF 2025: Back To The Dawn (PC)
After my first Backlog Blitz playthrough of this game, I DEVOURED IT non-stop off stream, because there's SO MUCH to get into. "One more time segment" became "One more day" became "One more chapter".
Back To The Dawn puts your character in a prison with the task of making an escape and completing your goal. Alongside your inmate of choice are 46 fellow prisoners and at least a dozen other NPCs to build rapport with. You earn money at jobs, trade, connive and build loyalties to survive and thrive.
I played as Thomas the Fox, a journalist who got too close to the truth and was set up and sent to prison. During his 21 days of playtime, you have to uncover the truth and work with your friends on the outside to get to the bottom of what really happened and make it out before the mayoral election. Time IS of the essence and it might require another play through on NG+ just to know what tasks to zero in on and how to do them.
For a Chinese studio, it's really on the pulse of what American Prisons are like in that A. Everyone is helplessly corrupt, and B. Everything is expensive. Your first mission in the game is to call your lawyer, but using the phone costs $100. So, you go to the lead guard, and he's willing to give you a laundry room job in exchange for doing him so favors. Then the deputy gives you your weekly essentials, but it's only enough for half a week. The rest is done by trading with your fellow inmates, but they'll only part with the good stuff after building significant trust, meaning that the scary prison gangs are more reliable hum- animals than the supposed "good guys".
The 21 days are broken up into several distinct sections: there's "morning/post headcount" where you can work jobs to make money, "lunch" where you can also unlock a 3 card poker game to earn more money, "recreation" where you can chat, go to church, build up your brawn in the exercise yard, or your brains in the Genreal Building. Each time block has distinct NPC dialogue, and your fellow prisoners talk amongst each other, who have relationships and stories that develop throughout your stay Bellevue Prison. I LOVE it when game has distinct threads you can pull on that can all lead to different places.
And there are A LOT. With several ways to escape, it's easy to get distracted and have the deadline creep up on you. Everyone was talking about Expedition 33 this year, but this is the RPG I sunk my teeth into .
ANNUAL REMINDER THAT YOU ARE YOUR OWN PERSON AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO REPEAT THE MISTAKES OF YOUR IDOLS
ALSO I SHARE A BIRTHDAY WITH MARY J. BLIGE
