.: I <3 Cute Games :.

Ok, so Comic Garden has caught my attention while I was doing some searching for otome games. The game isn’t actually out yet, but it’s due out 9/11, and you can pre-order it at play-asia.

So, what’s so exciting about Comic Garden? Well, I shall tell you why, you play an aspiring mangaka! I mean seriously, how cool is that. Those of you who know me, know that I create my own webcomics, so this type of thing is right up my alley. What’s even better is you get to play an older character. Most otome games seem to feature characters who are high school age, and sometimes younger. As it stands you get to play a 20 year old heroine who is in her second year of college, and has always dreamed of becoming a manga artist since she was a child. From the sounds of it, based off of my quick read, you move into an apartment managed by a childhood friend, and there you live with your obligatory otome game harem of men, all whom you can have romantic relations with should you so desire. Though I could be wrong about that live in part, but it seems like it from what I’ve read. Anyhow aside from the man chasing aspects, there appear that there are also some fun comic related mini games, like doing inking and toning.

The artwork is all done in a very nice, fresh and bright, shoujo manga style, to keep with the series theme. It is kind of refreshing to see a game with this more graphic, lined artwork feel, as so many games go for the line-less, heavy CG-look, which don’t get me wrong is nice too! Looks like this game has full voice acting as well, and the reading doesn’t seem terribly difficult from the screenshots I’ve seen. My only worry is I am wondering how important it is to the storyline to be successful at the mini games. For someone who may not draw a lot it could potentially be difficult for them.

Now I am only left wishing I had more money and time! Hopefully I can swing it to get this game!

The Official Site: http://www.d3p.co.jp/comicgarden/

So the Tree of Tranquility release date has been set back now for the umpteenth time. According to Gamstop the game will ship on September 16th. After having so many different incarnations of release dates for the game I’m not inclined to really believe anything regarding it any more. As it is, I’m glad I decided not to pre-order the game.

On the upside though, Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness for the DS is still set to ship on 8/26, which is a little under a week. If it holds true, since I am dying for a game to play over Labor Day weekend, I will probably head out to my local Target and grab a copy even though the characters in the game don’t appeal to me as much as in other games. *Sigh* and here I was looking forward to picking on Chihaya over Labor Day….

I have several new cute Spore creatures I uploaded to my spore page. I don’t have videos/pics for all of them this time, but here is a video of my Frogorvian Grasskirter to give you an example:

I would post my Spore widget for you to see the rest of my creatures, but unfortunately it breaks my journal page, so I’ll just have to link you to my profile: http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Tsukiyono

I’ve uploaded 3 new cute creatures to my spore page on the spore site, username Tsukiyono. The first one is the Pupzil a cute dog like creature with high social. You can check out the video of Pupzil on my youtube page here:

Spore Creature Creator - Pupzil

Next we have the Floribundus, my first cute plant type creature that has some bird aspects. This is another creature with very high social. I don’t have a video of Floribundus, but you can see her in the pic below…..

And lastly we have another dog type creature named Snuglefours, yet another cute and social creature. No video this time again, but I have a nice screenshot for you….

I’ll more than likely be creating more cute creatures in the days to come. If you like them and want to collect them for your own Spore world when the game comes out you are more than welcome to download them from my Spore page on the spore site. http://www.spore.com If you do download please take the time to rate (favorably XD).

I have another cute creature to share, this one is bunny themed cutie called Bunnerkin.  You can get Bunnerkin from my spore page at the spore site, username Tsukiyono.  Here is a video of Bunnerkin in action:

Spore Creature Creator - Bunnerkin

After getting very cheesed off that Harvest Moon Tree of Tranquility’s release date has now been pushed back to August 26th, I decided that I needed a little something to satiate my video game playing needs and thusly I bought the Spore Creature Creator. At $9.95 it’s cheap enough, and if you buy it at Target you will get a $5 off coupon to use later when you purchase the actual Spore game. I’d say at this point it has already provided enough entertainment to warrant it’s price tag as I have spent the greater part of the day trying to make the cutest creatures in Sporedom. As of now, this little guy that I call a Balibear, it my cutest to date. You can watch him do the cutie dance in the video…..

http://www.youtube.com/v/vmJN-ZOnfmw

Cute, no? Well at least I think he’s cute. :3 For anyone who is interested in having him in their collection, you can download him from my Spore page, the username is “Tsukiyono”. Anyway I like Spore a lot because I can create a whole slew of cute critters, and presumably eventually have all my cute and fuzzies cavorting around in a happy little spore world. Being able to play god over a world of cute sounds like a whole lot of fun from my girly perspective!

Anyway to download a free preview of the Spore Creature Creator, just visit:  http://www.spore.com and subsequently you should be able to find my Spore page there too. Lastly I should also mention that Spore is Mac friendly and rus quite well on my Macbook. :3

I thought I would post Hazuki’s kiss ending translation from 1st Love for those who know less Japanese than I. Keep in mind I’m only a student of Japanese, so my translation may be off in parts. I welcome people to help and correct/explain any errors I’ve made as well. The lines marked with two asterisks are specifically the parts I am dodgey on.

Hazuki Kei
Normal Confession Ending with Kiss

You: Kei-chan (or whatever your nick was for him)

Kei: So you came here.
Are you crying?

You: But…..I…..

Kei: Princess.
I have escaped the dense forest and came back to see you once again.
I have returned to you.

You: Kei-chan

Kei: You remember my promise to tell you the rest of the story?

You: …..yes

Kei: Don’t cry.

You: alright…..
Kei-chan, when did you remember?

Kei: The day of the entrance ceremony…
When I saw you that time in front of the church.
I knew immediately.
You hadn’t changed a bit from that time.

You: Is that so?

Kei: Yes, you had the same happy smiling face as back then.
It was as if time had stopped at this church.

You: Then……why…..until now?

Kei: I couldn’t be the first to say, if I was mistaken about that time.
I thought it might be best to leave things as they were and not say anything.

You: Such a thing (to do)

Kei: But, as expected, you still smiled just like back then, and I became angry (with myself).
Steadily my feelings came back to me. **
That time when I held your hand in mine, I hoped you still held those memories. **
Though little by little I was bringing about our separation. **
But when I met with you, no matter what, I could never say it very well. **
I felt if the words had been said, you might disappear from in front of me. **
But, as it is, if we graduate today I will lose you forever.
I…..I don’t want to be separated from you.
So…..
Yumi (insert your name here)
I have returned to you.

<3 Chu <3 At this point you touch his lips with the stylus instead of answering.

Kei: You…..just now…..kiss…..

You: Thank you.
I can’t speak of this feeling very well…..

Kei: Me either.

You: Kei-chan too?

Kei: Surely because it can’t be said well….
Surely, we don’t need words to convey it.
This is for you…..

Scene changes to Kei putting a ring on your finger (where an engagement ring would go mind you!)

You: It’s beautiful…..
It’s for me?

Kei: Yes, I thought I would give it to you at Christmas, but now seems better.

You: Yeah…..
This….is a clover?

Kei: Yes.
It’s what the returning prince brought back from his travels.
He gave the princess a ring made of clover.
“You are my heart’s joy, and now we are bound together forever.”

You: Forever…..

Kei: Forever.
Our ever after starts from here.

You: Kei-chan

Kei: Shhh……
Because words aren’t enough, we’ll kiss.
I love you.

And end with a pretty kiss scene.

I’ve been wanting a pretty TokimemoGS desktop pic, but was having trouble finding anything to fit my laptops 1280 x 800 screen, so I decided to make a couple of my own. Because I don’t have the illustration book yet, I borrowed scans from pinku_hearts on livejournal to make these. Anyway, so without further ado here are the two versions of the Hazuki Kei desktop pic/wallpaper I made today. One is plain and the other I used some custom brushes and such on. All I ask is that you do not re-post these anywhere, and especially those wallpaper gallery sites that make you create an account to download and then sell your email to spammers. D:

Ahhhh, I got my love-love ending with Kei which has got to be the most romantic and sweet ending ever! I feel so satisfied having Kei’s ending that I don’t even know if I will bother trying to get any of the other endings. With the main storyline inherent in the game, it seems like it would be too sad not to have the prince and princess be reunited in the end. (*^u^*) Gosh I feel some fan-art-fic-ing coming on!

In the beginning Kei is a little bit too cold, and it was kind of frustrating really. I kept hoping that I might be able to get my studies up and unlock Tendou Jin early in my second year, and then I would ditch Kei for Jin’s ending. Alas though, I never met Jin, because after you get Kei into friendly mode it’s pretty easy to get him up to like, and from there you are probably only a date or two away from smitten! Once he is smitten with you he is the sweetest guy ever, and his blushing reactions to your poking is so cute! I especially loved to try to hold his hand at the date meeting spot because his blushy distressed “Muboubisugida” is just too too adorable….well and it gives you a great deal of hearts which sends you straight into dark pink love-love mode. There really is nothing more fun than dating Kei when he’s at max tokimeki.

As the third year came to a close, you could tell that the love tension was amping up between the hero and heroine. The Cinderella play for the cultural festival was practically perfection, when he messed up his lines at the end and so forcefully told you not to go as the clock struck midnight. He was definitely thinking about the impending separation at graduation. :3 Uu hu hu….. Then much to my surprise, after the cultural festival, at the very tail end of the third year Kei asked me to his house! So yay, I got to see his room. :3 I don’t know if this can only happen in your third year or not, but it would be interesting to find out if anyone else was able to get him to take you to his house before then.

Maybe I’m just sappy, but really this game made me feel a little sad at graduation. Natsumi was who I considered my best friend in the game, and there was part of me who wanted to see a Natsumi x Madoka story. Anyway I think it would have been nice to have been able to see your friends before the final confession. Eitherway I think the writers/developers did a good job on this game, because they made me feel stressed in my third year (so many bombs! cursed Morimura and Hibiya!), and I felt quite wistful during the last walk through of the campus after the graduation speech. I guess you almost kind of feel like this was your school life. I think this type of game has real potential as far as story goes. It was really very much like playing a character in a book, and I really love getting my head into a good book. : )

Anyway so I guess my final thoughts would be, that I would highly recommend this game! Especially for those who are overly romantic-minded. It was really so much fun!

I’ll get my general skinship notes out of the way first and move on to the Hazuki specific notes. First of all, there is the date crasher. You can really look at the date crasher as a stroke of good luck, because when your date arrives to fend off the jerk you get extra opportunities to skinship with him! With Hazuki you can safely skinship twice, and touching his hands and arms should result in a generous amount of love points. On another general skinship note, it appears that when you first start dating the guys and they are just neutral, you are mostly going to be getting friendship points and a few love points. As your relationship grows, you wind up getting more love points, and can eventually hold hands with your fellow when he takes you home. The point is though, don’t get discouraged if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere love wise with the skinship, as it just takes time, many dates and lots of parameter upping.

Now on to some specifics for Hazuki. If you ask Hazuki out to see the fireworks (which you should!), when you arrive at your meeting place you can feel free to skinship him anywhere, as it won’t fail, however as soon as you arrive at the fireworks date spot you should only touch his body. Touching anywhere else (ie hands, hair, face) will result in fail if you are at : ) or lower. I have yet to try it at : D or higher though…..just have to wait until next year. Also thanks to the lovely skinship FAQ at Love & Numerology I discovered that this festival is one of the few times you can bother a guy with skinship before he asks you a question, so take advantage of it!

Finally, most other times Hazuki really really likes having his hair touched, even if you are at neutral with him you can tossle his hair for friendship and love points. It seems like this is especially effective for Hanami and Momiji. So if you are just starting out, the hair is always a good bet, but save before every date just in case there is a location quirk that will get you.