Prinzessin Rabe

Always, not just this weekend: Nintendogs + Cats on 3DS. I’m not in a rush to get through everything the game has, and I’m not “good at the game” insofar this is even a criterion for this type of game. I posted a screenshot in a comment to the weekly thread a few weeks ago. Since then, I discovered that you can only have 3000 screenshots on the 3DS’s memory card (I made a post about that on !3ds@lemmy.world). 3000 might sound like a high number, but it is really not if you have a lot of near-misses in pressing the capture button. So now I have the interesting secondary task of sorting through all the screenshots that I moved to my desktop. Not really a game, though.

In addition to that, I started a new playthrough of Pokémon Crystal. I’m doing a not-so-hardcore Nuzlocke challenge to make it more interesting for myself. But this is really not about difficulty, this is what I can play in short bursts without having to use my brain all that much (I have other games in my backlog for that, and also other non-game things to do). While I still have my childhood Gameboy Color and game cartridges that I keep for sentimental reasons, I opt to play on an emulator on my Android for convenience.

Silly predictions for upcoming third-party games:

• Capcom reveals the Ace Attorney spin-off Space Attorney. Like the original, but in space!
• After the remakes of Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town as Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life as Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Marvelous surprises everyone by skipping over the Wii games directly to the 3DS game Story of Seasons (2014), soon to be remade as Story of Seasons: Story of Seasons.

(Both Ace Attorney and Story of Seasons have completely different names in the original. So a concept that is based on the English name sounding funny is highly unlikely. But hey, who cares, I’ve got my speculation fun.)

Playing video games? I’m over here playing with my pets.

Image description: screenshot from the 3DS game Nintendogs + Cats. The image features a Yorkshire Terrier puppy, a grey tabby kitten, and a calico kitten. The dog is standing on its hind legs, front paws at the camera, wearing a blue collar with a white pattern. The two cats are a little further back, gracefully walking on the wooden floor. There are some furniture items in the background, with sunlight streaming in from a window.

Upcoming games in the genre:

• Project René / The Sims 5
• Paralives
• Life by You (developed by Paradox Tectonic and published by Paradox Interactive, known as the publishers of Cities Skylines and Crusader Kings)
• InZOI (developed by Krafton, best known for PUBG)
• Tiny Lives (another indie, looks more like a pixelated version of The Sims 1 than a modern life sim)

The term “life sim” can apply to something like Animal Crossing, where you play as one character living their life. I sometimes use terms like “life sim/household management game” or “dollhouse sim” to describe the specific type of game, but the first one is clunky and some sims players use “dollhouse” as a negative term. So it’s easier to just say “life sim” and specify if needed.

I have thought about maybe making an overview post of all the upcoming (and existing) “characters living in a household” life sims. Maybe we could call those “simslikes” and “simslites”? The same way that gamers call specific types of games roguelikes/roguelites.

Very accurate simmer behavior.

Image description:

Stick figure drawing taken from the xkcd webcomic. The main character sits at a desktop PC setup, visibly hacking at the keyboard. Someone out of frame talks to the main character. The dialogue is:

Out of frame: “Are you coming to bed?” Main character: “I can’t. It’s important.” Out of frame: “What?” Main character: “I’m downloading more Sims CC”

The last line of dialogue is in a different font, as it is replaced for the meme. In the bottom left corner, there is a watermark that says “imgflip.com”.