Top 13 Blandest Video Games

I've certainly made no secret of my large video game collection in the past, and as it continues to grow, I feel compelled to do something more with it than just play the games for my own enjoyment. Naturally, a few obvious ideas came to mind, like making a list of the best games I've ever played (which seems too hard to decide on save a select few at the very top) or perhaps a list of the worst games I've ever played. However, with the idea of the worst video games I've ever played comes the fact that I actually enjoy playing bad games. A bad game can be enjoyed ironically or made fun of, and there are entire series like the Angry Video Game Nerd built on the back of making fun of how bad some games are.

So that is where the idea for this list came from. Since I couldn't decide on the best games and felt I couldn't make a truly objective bad games list due to my enjoyment of them, I instead settled on making a list of some games that are so uninteresting, so absolutely dull that you can't possibly eke any sort of enjoyment out of them, whether it be genuine or ironic. Yahtzee recently made a similar list of blandest games in his web show, and although it certainly inspired the use of the word Blandest, the idea was already thought up before the synchronicity was noticed.

These are the games I may one day beat, but I probably won't enjoy doing so. These are the games that are so average they won't harm you to play, but won't entertain you either. Many of these games I never got too far in, but a game should not rely on your goodwill to play it far enough in to hopefully find what might be a good part. A painfully boring start rarely makes a possibly good end worth reaching. Although some day I may do something grander with my game collection, for now, allow me to share with you the 13 games that just aren't worth anyone's time or money.

And here.... we go!

13: Magical Starsign
System: Nintendo DS
Genre: JRPG
The first game on this list holds a special place in my heart as being the first game to truly break my trust in Nintendo. For a long time, simply being published by Nintendo meant, in my eyes, that the game was guaranteed to be of a certain level of quality, and even now I usually trust them more as a publisher than other companies. However, this bog-standard DS JRPG took that trust and tainted it forever.

To be honest, Magical Starsign is not an entirely offensive game, although the art style is rather ugly in certain parts (just look at those two main characters on the boxart and their weird abs and faces), and of all the games that made it on this list, I am most willing to believe this game may "get better" somewhere down the road, but Magical Starsign makes a terrible mistake early on: for the tutorial it gives you all the characters and abilities that it will soon strip away and slowly give back to you over the course of the game. Not only is this bad form for a tutorial, as gameplay elements should be taught when relevant instead of hoping you remember them when they come up down the road, but it also makes the early game feel too simple while at once having a weird undercurrent of needless complexity. Games like Star Ocean: The First Departure can blindside you with too much info early on that makes it hard to figure it out later when its actually usable, but Magical Starsign dumps it on your head and then removes it, which can work in simple platformers or metroidvanias, but in a JRPG it just makes the already monotonous battle system feel even worse when you are constantly working with so much less than you were given to see at the start.

All in all though, it really is just a bog-standard JRPG whose few innovations are just not interesting enough to save it. And that isn't even me dissing basic JRPG gameplay, as I was delighted to find Glory of Heracles is a great yet simple handheld JRPG. However, in Magical Starsign, a giant scorpion boss early on can be trounced no sweat with basic attacks, making both the boss and your extra abilities seem underwhelming. I played a bit into the game, enough to realize how slowly I'd be getting my party back. One day I may just force myself to beat it, but as it stands, its just an RPG with an uninteresting story and gameplay. Maybe it was meant for a younger audience based on the art style and all, but there are already so many better RPGs for children that don't have weird mechanics based on how the planets are aligned.

Fun Fact: Magical Starsign became a personal nickname of mine for a move Algol uses in Soul Calibur 4 and onward. He has a move that causes him to float up into the air with his arms crossed and briefly blink out of existence. I have tried many times to find out what the move is useful for and turned up nothing, so I one day called the move "Magical Starsign", as I felt it was something that looked promising and I had the right to believe would be good, but I just could not find anything appealing about it.

Don't let Mokka's awesome design fool you: this game ain't worth your time. In fact, many other characters have pretty decent designs. But they're in a game that really doesn't deserve them.

12: Pac-Man World
System: Playstation
Genre: 3-D Platformer

There's a soft spot in my heart for the old retro icons who have never successfully made the jump away from the initial game that made them famous. Pretty much any Frogger game besides the original is hilarious in its attempts to turn a frog crossing the road into an adventure hero, and ol' Pac-Man here has also struggled to make his mark anywhere but a maze. Certainly, many of Pac-Man's games could probably make a worst games list, with the infamous Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures being a definite candidate, but even that game has hilarious moments like Pac-Man seemingly drunk on milk. You may have to guide him around like a mix between a Lemming and a Sim in that game, but at least it was bad enough to be interesting.

Pac-Man World however came with the promise that it wasn't all that bad. Supposedly it was a decent jump for the yellow pellet muncher into 3D.

It's not.

In fact, despite the genre being a 3-D platformer, I feel like Pac-Man World embodies the idea behind a 2.5D game better than supposed genre members like Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. In that Kirby game, the models and world are 3-D but your movement is restricted to a 2D plane. In Pac-Man World however, the platformer is still from left to right, but you can move into and out of the background, not that its every really populated with much interesting for you to interact with and more often than not just makes you miss jumps or hit obstacles because of the need to align yourself  properly in the flat 3D plane.

Pac-Man World really does play like a 2D platformer for the most part, with interspersed maze sections because it's Pac-Man. There are a wide selection of collectibles that make the already hard-to-enjoy game more tiresome if you wish to collect them, leading to backtracking and mucking about for rewards that just can't be worth it.

Perhaps the sequels were better as I've seen they actually become proper 3D platformers, but Pac-Man World, the original, is just another failed attempt by Pac-Man to find a hold outside of gobbling dots in mazes.

11: Conker's Pocket Tales
System: Game Boy/ Game Boy Color
Genre: Top-Down Adventure

Many a year ago, I managed to find a playable demo on a Gameboy at I think Toys R' Us that had Conker's Pocket Tales. I wandered around a bit near the starting house, did nothing of note, and left with no true impression of the game.

If only I had stuck around long enough to realize how average this game is.

Flash forward at least a decade to a time near the present, where I became interested in a podcast called The Kongversation, where two enthusiastic and funny guys talk about games starring Donkey Kong or the closely associated cast of Rare characters like Conker and Banjo. I quite enjoy listening to it as I work or play games, and every now and again they do episode spotlights on certain games. One episode was for this game: Conker's Pocket Tales, one I had heard them praise in other episodes, so my curiosity grew and I decided to buy it so I can play it and then listen to the episode afterwards.

After playing it for a while, I'm not sure when I might listen to that episode, as completing the game seems like it will be a slog. If you ever wondered if Conker's turn towards the more irreverent and foul-mouthed Conker's Bad Fur Day was a good decision, this game should convince you that it was the only hope for this series. I have my own issues with Conker's Bad Fur Day of course, but its humor and over-the-top offensiveness make it an enjoyable game, certainly after your run-in with the Great Mighty Poo.

Conker's Pocket Tales, meanwhile, had the canned Twelve Tales been made as a follow-up with similar gameplay and sensibilities, would have likely marred the company's reputation long before the buyout by Microsoft. This Game Boy title thankfully fell off the radar of enough people for Banjo and DK to carry the Rare name to greatness.

Now then, the game itself: It's like a really crappy Link's Awakening. You wander around collecting gifts that were stolen from your birthday party by Evil Acorn, who also kidnapped your girlfriend. Current Rare employees seem to have no memory of this game, and that's no surprise as nothing really stands out about it. Fighting anything in the game is a drag, as you rely on a slingshot with limited ammo to do the deed and the enemies aren't challenging, only really good at being in the way. You also have a ground pound, but it only works as a finishing move as you'll be hurt if you use it on something that survives and isn't a wind-up mouse. The puzzles are standard "push box on switch" affairs, and every now and again there is a boss or a basic shooting minigame.

Rare has a reputation for doing a genre Nintendo has done but better: Donkey Kong Country is the better Super Mario Bros, Banjo-Kazooie the better Mario 64, Conker's Pocket Tales... it's like an early Zelda game without any of the interesting elements.

10:  SimCity 2000
System: Game Boy Advance
Genre: City Builder

The only game on this list simply for being a bad port, for it manages to suck all the fun out of a rather great series.

My love for SimCity came from the original on SNES, and its still my go-to city builder of choice as I play it on Wii's Virtual Console every now and again. I know there are better ones out there, and for a long time I played the disc version of the PC's SimCity 3000, although the disc itself and a computer with a suitable disc drive have yet to reunite in recent times. The SNES one stands as my lasting favorite though, but after playing both the SNES one and the PC's SimCity 3000, I wanted a city builder I could play on the go, and that's why I picked up SimCity 2000... and later sold it because I didn't like it at all.

The core gameplay is simple enough: build a city, watch it grow, deal with its problems and demands in an attempt to make it successful. It's actually a pretty good genre for a mobile system, as you can pick it up, change a few things, and not worry about having to stop the game to do something as it can save anytime and there is no true stopping point like a game with levels would have.

Sadly, this GBA port of SimCity 2000 makes compromises that hurt the game's overall feel. The small screen means you can't really get a great view of your city at large or even a decent sized area for operating in. Plumbing is entirely absent as a system, and while it's a bit more of a nuisance in city builders than something interesting, its absence can't help but be felt. Disasters are anemic affairs, and the screen is cluttered with your tools, making your beautiful city even more difficult to see behind it all. Sandwiched between the simplicity of the SNES original and the juggernaut that was the PC's 3000, 2000 felt like it was missing too much from both without contributing anything to justify its existence. Maybe the DS SimCity games were better, but 2000 made me mistrust the genre on handhelds, and at this point in time, there is literally no reason to go back to it, as modern city builders have more going for them and older ones can scratch your itch if you crave simplicity... or Bowser stomping on your city.

9: The UnderGarden
System: Steam
Genre: Casual Puzzle Game

That guy's pretty cute looking there. In game though, you start off with an ugly/cute bluish creature that certainly won't endear itself to you as you try and drag it through a supposedly "zen" game.

Before making this list, I made sure to give this a second go, as my initial experience with it made me so tired from the uninteresting gameplay I quit before finishing the first level. Well, I went in and beat the first level, and left with a headache for my troubles.

UnderGarden is a simplistic puzzle game where you float around a world collecting pollen to make plants grow back, occasionally solving puzzles with the fruit they grow while dragging around little dudes with instruments sometimes. The little dudes with instruments are the highlight of the game, as they are cute and have decent beats to share, but dragging them around is a chore and seemingly pretty useless. To be fair, doing anything is a chore, as the game relies solely on your mouse for movement. You hold down left click to move in a direction and it feels sluggish and awful no matter how you do it. Almost all the puzzles are finicky and the physics feel inconsistent and strange. Regrowing the plants is tedious and unrewarding as they are almost all generic stalks that don't even manage to be pretty, although the game thinks they are. There's another game on Steam called CreaVures that makes up for its basic but good enough gameplay with a beautiful aesthetic, but UnderGarden's aesthetic is lifeless even when you're literally putting life back into the world. Growing plants is an easy way to inject beauty, and yet it fails here.

Now, the bad gameplay tries to hide behind one strong claim from the developers: it's a Zen game. You're not supposed to play it like a normal game, its supposed to be enjoyed slowly and casually. Well... even that kind of game needs to engage you in some way. Growing the plants is boring as you keep needing to refill on pollen and the plants are nearly everywhere and require you to rub and refill over and over before doing anything of note if you want to 100% a level. Even if you ignore it, the gameplay just isn't relaxing at all. There are some good games like Zen Puzzle Garden and Zen Bound 2 that claim to be Zen but are a bit too frustrating at times to fit, but they are still good games so it's okay. If you really want a Zen game, I might recommend Woodle Tree Adventures for its simple gameplay, although some glitches and the occasional frustration crop up, its mostly a bit of mindless platforming fun with a cute aesthetic (although one achievement requires a glitch exploit to avoid being a boring grindfest). Even games like Sonic Labyrinth would make a better Zen game than UnderGarden, as they are still games that have gameplay and goals, even though you can zone out and play them easily enough due to their simplicity.

UnderGarden was apparently published by Atari, which in its current dark ages is no surprise. Really, this quote from the Wikipedia page says what I'm trying to say rather nicely: "msxbox-world.com described it as " [feeling] like an artsy game made by a bunch of businessmen, rather than an artist". It's got nothing to make it stand out but it hits all the marks it needs to in order to look Indie. I actually watched a video of it before buying where the guy playing it said I probably wouldn't enjoy it. I am sorry for doubting you sir.

8: Dungeon Hunter: Alliance
System: Playstation 3
Genre: Diablo-style Hack-and-Slash RPG

They say any game can be fun if you play it with friends.

Dungeon Hunter: Alliance proves that isn't true.

My brother, my long time friend Ven and I will often meet up and play video games, but there was a bit of a drought in new games to play at one point and it seemingly fell on me to track some down to inject a little variety and novelty in the game lineup we played. I browsed a few websites looking for fun multiplayer games and we ended up playing two of the games that seemingly came highly recommended: one was Castle Crashers, a game that my brother didn't enjoy but me and Ven were able to enjoy when we later played it two-player. The other... was Dungeon Hunter: Alliance.

There was a time I thought Diablo-style RPGs weren't for me, but much like Smite dispelled the idea that I would never like MOBAs and Civilization V made me realize I could like 4X strategy games... I thankfully found the game Torchlight before playing this game that embodies the issues I have with Diablo-clones. Loot-focused gameplay may work in single-player games, or even games with online co-op, but Dungeon Hunter: Alliance provides new and better loot so rapidly that the hack-and-slash battles must frequently be put on hold as obtuse menus are opened, covering huge swathes of the screen, to update to the latest gear.

Our gaming group made a valiant effort to persist despite the loot menus, with my brother as the warrior, me as mage, and Ven on the rogue... until everyone realized that long-range bow attacks were better in every situation seemingly and gameplay devolved into standing far away and picking off bad guys with little in the way of action. For a time I even specifically avoided praising my bow, as I was the first to pick it up as my attack of choice, as I feared that would happen if the others found out how good it was.

Efforts were made to keep things from going stale, and there are a few jokes we extracted from playing it (like everyone trying to shaft me with Muslin equipment long after it stopped being useful), but the core gameplay was broken over our knees by the Bow Party and the story certainly wasn't keeping us around. Single-player does not sound promising either, as you'd have no one to talk with and you'd instead have those lonesome loot menus and bow battles to yourself.

Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is probably the first of these bland games that I would consider a bad game for being so bland. Conker, Magical Starsign... heck, even UnderGarden might be tolerated or have room for improvement later in the game. But now... we've entered the lower echelons of mediocrity.

7: Surgeon Simulator 2013
System: Steam
Genre: Obtuse-Controls "Simulator"

In what I imagine might be my most controversial inclusion on this list, I feel Surgeon Simulator isn't really a game to be played so much as watched on Youtube as humorous Let's Players struggle with the controls. Games like this, Octodad, and QWOP are all part of a new breed of game where the controls are made obtuse on purpose and serve as the main challenge of the game rather than the task at hand. The thing is, Octodad and QWOP both offer far more tangible goals, and QWOP is short enough to be enjoyable while Octodad is certainly more palatable control-wise than Surgeon Simulator. Games like Goat Simulator rely on wacky physics to make humorous situations for the player to experience, but most of Surgeon Simulator's humor comes from the concept rather than the execution.

The goal of a round of Surgeon Simulator is to complete a simplified operation even though your individual fingers are all mapped to different keys. Your wrist is also independently controlled, and there are many tools to knock around beside the operating table. There is no real penalty for messing around unless you really go to far... but messing around really doesn't offer much. Even cracking open a skull with a hammer feels rather underwhelming thanks to the plain animation and lack of true reaction from the gaming world. That's why I recommend it more as a game to watch others play, as they can react and actually give you something worth watching, whereas the gameplay is too basic if you work out the complexities, which really isn't hard compared to games like QWOP. If you have to force yourself to perform poorly to extract fun, then you have discovered a special style of denial.

The game can also be pegged for starting the trend of ironic simulator games or other Obtuse-Control games like Ampu-Tea which deviate completely into the territory of being bad, as the joke of Surgeon Simulator is that its something incredibly complex turned into a goofy physics toybox. I think that's the real issue after all: it's a physics toybox more than anything, and while similar toyboxes like Windosill avoided this list for being honest about that quality and very short, Surgeon Simulator 2013 became a phenomenon thanks to Youtube, while the game itself is rather uninteresting to play, as even the "frustration gaming" side of it doesn't hold much water as the goal is arbitrary and the operation easily repeatable and short. I really wanted to enjoy this one, and they've added updates to up the variety, but its basically just paint jobs for an experience that can't really be enjoyed solo.

6: Akimbo: Kung Fu Hero
System: PC CD-ROM
Genre: Platformer

Bless my older sister's heart for noticing my interest in video games and trying to buy me one as a gift. Sadly, her good intentions fell short as she had no idea how to find out which games are good and she likely was tricked by a cover that looks much more interesting than anything the game has to offer.

Despite the anime-inspired appearance of our protagonist Akimbo on the cover here, Akimbo and every other living thing in this game take the form of lumpy models as 3D was becoming the hip thing in PC gaming. Akimbo and the 3D models bounce around 2D environments in a very poor and needlessly difficult platformer that really is as hard as it is because of the poor controls and the sorry excuse for Kung-Fu on display. Akimbo's attacks have no range to them and little satisfying substance, so most enemies are best off ignored and hopped over. The platforming is nothing new, with generic collectibles floating around and rather plain level design.

Akimbo is the embodiment of the cliché 2D Platformer, and even though it gives you punches and kicks instead of Goomba stomps to take on enemies, it couldn't better embody the sorry state of the genre back before it fell out of vogue.

Akimbo has also made me hesitant to buy the highly praised but very similar in appearance platformer Tomba! on the PSN, although the lackluster trailer did it no favors as well. But that is how deeply Akimbo burned me: it makes me mistrust other games that bear even a passing resemblance to it.

I almost can't think of anything else to say about it. It does nothing unique, it takes no risks, its core selling point (the Kung-Fu) has less depth than the NES Kung-Fu from years earlier, and I almost think that quote on the case must be IGN having a quote removed from context. It's a Frankenstein of all the most basic components needed to be a platformer. I certainly do not bemoan the fact that my laptop's CD drive does not work, as I'm missing nothing by not being able to play Akimbo, who as far as I know, never truly stands akimbo. I don't even recall him using that sword but he must get it at some point. I mostly just remember being killed by clams with googly eyes.

5: Duck Hunt
System: Wii U Virtual Console (originally NES)
Genre: Light Gun Shooter

No one ever made it a rule that video games needed to be timeless, but Duck Hunt would certainly break that rule if it did exist. One of the earliest Light Gun games and certainly the most popular, Duck Hunt has not stood the test of time, and I am quite happy it was my brother who bought when it came to the Wii U Virtual Console instead of me, as I barely got an hour or two of out this dated shooting game.

I can certainly believe it was something in its time, but unlike Pong which can still be enjoyed for its simplicity, Duck Hunt almost feels too simple. Game A (and may I say I dislike games having a Game A and Game B be titled that way if they are completely different, most likely due to a mistrust built up from games that have Game A and Game B as tiny variations on one game instead of separate game types) is the well known Duck Hunt mode, where a bunch of Ducks fly out of the bushes and you shoot them down. Thing is... it really isn't that difficult. The ducks fly out in rather simple and predictable patterns, and it requires much less precision to peg them than most light gun games. Of course, as time goes on, the Ducks get harder to shoot as they fly faster, but the difficulty progression is just slow enough that by the time you're missing ducks, you're doing so more out of boredom than out of the climbing difficulty. The Game Over and laughing dog are quite welcome after trying to pay attention to the game long enough to succeed.

Game B at least seems to be more of a challenge even before the difficulty hike. Clay Pigeons are shot out and you must shoot them down, and their size scales as they fly further away from you, meaning even the easy ones must be shot early so they don't become more difficult to peg. Still, much like the ducks, they never really do much besides get thrown out to be shot in predictable paths and patterns.

It seems a bit rude to pick on the grandfather of Light Gun games, but without nostalgia to prop up Duck Hunt, most people will find it to be a rather plain experience. Even simple hunting games, like the arcade cabinets you find at Chuck E. Cheese where they give you five bullets to shoot 3 bucks, are far more interesting. Shots are strategic there (at least theoretically) and the shots more satisfying. By the end of your first round through of duck shooting though, its hard to wring any fun from the remaining waves of ducks before you cave-in and let yourself lose or simply lose when the ducks get too fast to track. Although I'm sure you could track them if you wanted to, it's just nearly impossible to care by that point.

Duck Hunt by this point is a fossil: it's valuable in that it provides knowledge of our past, but it can't do much else besides that.

4: WarioWare: Snapped!
System: DSi
Genre: Camera-Based Minigames

The DSi created quite a splash when it was given built-in cameras and the ability to download virtual titles, and to introduced the DSiware to the world, Nintendo created a few simple games to test the waters. Birds and Beans was pulled out of the WarioWare games, and although it was an orphaned minigame, it was still enjoyable enough. WarioWare's larger minigames were a decent fit for cheap downloadable titles (although these days charging 2 bucks for a game like Birds and Beans would cause tons of internet whining).  The other game Nintendo released though was WarioWare: Snapped! Wow! A whole new WarioWare game! Sure it's five bucks, so it won't be as big as the others, but it'll still be fun, right?

Unfortunately, the camera gimmick used in all the games is a complete disaster. The DSi camera is decent enough for taking pictures (they weren't the best quality but were okay for the time), but relying on the camera for motion games was a terrible, terrible decision. When even the Kinect couldn't handle it years later with better equipment, the DSi camera was doomed to fail as a motion-detecting device. Not to mention that the DSi camera had a weird habit of turning you into a shadow man no matter how bright it was.

Anyway, Snapped! asks you to place your DSi on a table or something and stand far away enough so your hands and face are visible, so already you are far from a tiny screen trying to play minigames with a body you can barely see. Bizarrely, there is a subset of games (1/4 of the total amount on offer!) that can only be played with two people, further stretching the capabilities of a camera that was already not up to snuff.

The games run the gambit of so easy you can basically make any motion to win to impossible thanks to the camera's poor detection of your body. The microgames will grind to a halt if it's not detecting you right, so the frantic and speedy nature of WarioWare is ruined when you try to win a game quickly only for the DSi to fail to register your waving hand as a waving hand. There are 20 or so microgames total and although you may find a decent one every now and again, you can only play them in five game chunks.

Nintendo was too new to DSiware and WarioWare did the best it could with the limitations of the new frontier and the new tech, but it was doomed before it left the starting gate thanks to the poor design decision of trying to use a DSi camera like the Playstation Eye.

3: Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection
System: Playstation 2
Genre: Pinball

Picking on a Pinball game may seem like me choosing an easy target, but I'm actually a big fan of virtual pinball. Pokemon Pinball, Sonic Spinball, and Pinball FX2 (which uses somewhat realistic Pinball tables) are all games I've enjoyed, and while games like Mario Pinball Land were underwhelming, they were still fun at times. Having played a variety of Pinball games as well as a couple real Pinball tables, I felt buying a game that took classic Pinball tables and digitized them wouldn't be a bad idea. The Gottlieb Collection and the as-of-yet-never-owned Williams Collection both spoke to me, and Gottlieb was the one I got first... and the one that made me not want to pursue the Williams Collection.

The pinball mechanics work fine and everything, but the collection of tables available are so uninspired or strangely complex that none of them make me wish to continue playing them. The only one with any hope is Tee'd Off, a simple golf themed table with groundhogs and a refreshing simplicity compared to some of the other tables that have multiple table layers or some other alienating premise.

A lot of real world Pinball tables use a franchise to draw eyes and players, so these unaffiliated ones must have felt the need to really innovate to grab the attention of flighty pinball players, but the strange gimmicks coupled with unrewarding gameplay makes me want to pass them all by in this virtual arcade. You'd think it would be easy to make the pinball satisfying with some bright flashing lights and loud noises, but it's too busy trying to push the core gimmick to allow itself to be fun or interesting.

The pinball collection offers nothing that I wouldn't rather get from a physical pinball table or a better executed fictional one. I imagine this is supposed to be a bit of a nostalgia hook for Pinball Wizards, but this collection holds no magic for anyone who just wants a set of tables for some relaxing and enjoyable virtual pinball.

2: Dear Esther
System: Steam
Genre: Walking Simulator/Art Game

Welcome to the bottom of the barrel, where only two completely bland games remain, one of which is offensive in claiming itself to be art when the game has barely substance to it at all.

Although I do not like the negative connotation of the term "Walking Simulator" and how liberally the term is applied these days, that is really all there is to Dear Esther. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a beautiful game with a compelling story, and I enjoyed games like Gone Home that often get the name "Walking Simulator" tacked onto them, and although I'm not really a fan of the "find the note" gameplay of Gone Home and its kin, it certainly beats the do-nothing gameplay of Dear Esther. Dear Esther is technically an art game, which supposedly absolves it of all criticism when really, if it truly was an art game, then discussion and criticism should be done more heavily of it than a standard video game.

Dear Esther's gameplay consists of walking around an island and gradually being told a story as you progress. However, these story tidbits are randomly selected and it can take up to four playthroughs to even get the complete story, whereas one is more than enough for anyone and the story doesn't really get more fleshed out than a generic one you'd know the important details of regardless of which ones you randomly get. Dear Esther is about a man whose wife died in a car crash. There, that is the bulk of the story. Of course he's sad about it, but there's not much done with the story or setup and it carries about the standard emotional weight you'd expect from that without any substance to back it up. The island the game takes place on is good looking when not under close scrutiny, where you'll realize the grass and mushrooms are just a bunch of 2-d sprites. For a world you'll be looking at the whole time with no interaction of any sort, you'd think they'd make that less obvious.

You move through some rather uninteresting locations, told a standard story, and then it ends predictably. There are some setpieces, and the beach full of shipwrecks, perhaps the most interesting one, seems to have no purpose. Dear Esther probably gets more praise then it deserves for shaking the tree and making us look at what truly constitutes a game, but its got too many contemporaries these days who do its ideas better, with better stories, environments, and sometimes they even include gameplay!

I try not to use the word pretentious lightly, but Dear Esther pretty much embodies it. It takes you for granted and gives you very little for giving it the benefit of the doubt. There are very few games I want to hate, and I hoped that Dear Esther wouldn't be a bad game when I played it, but it really did nothing to try and earn my favor.

Art is subjective, but bad art and good art can both elicit reactions from people who see it. Dear Esther just doesn't really have anything interesting to evoke reactions from anyone. Is there anything worse than mediocre art?

Before we continue on to number one, I felt this would be a good place to share some...

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS

Here I'm going to list really quickly some games that were uniquely bland without being offensively so.  Perhaps they didn't meet expectations or simply failed to be boring enough to earn a spot on the list, but very briefly, here are the games that were kinda bland, but not really that bad.

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
System: Game Boy
Genre: Platformer

I'm a big fan of the Wario platformers and have been one since I played the excellent Wario Land 4, and while some games have difficulty in being memorable experiences despite being fun (Wario: Master of Disguise and Wario Land: Shake It! deserving special mention despite their steps to avoid it), going back to play Wario's first solo game made me realize how lucky we are to have gotten it as a full series. Wario Land 1 plays like what a modern bad licensed platformer game might play like. The throwing mechanic is incredibly basic and not very interesting, and the hats are so vital to the gameplay that losing them means you might as well restart the level.

Still, Wario Land can be powered through and it isn't exactly bad in the end, just a bit generic and a poor start for a series that would prove its worth in the next installment.

Tales of Symphonia
System: Gamecube
Genre: JRPG

And I thought Surgeon Simulator would be my most controversial pick! Now, while most the games on this list I would argue are objectively bland, Tales of Symphonia feels more like its just personally bland to me. Symphonia had a lot of things going for it to make it sell well and become a classic, being a JRPG on a system that desperately needed them. It's only contemporaries really were the atypical and quirky Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and the criminally overlooked Skies of Arcadia Legends. Not to mention it had co-op, which is a major selling point on a Nintendo console.

However, much of my problems with it are sort of echoes of my issues with Magical Starsign. It's a pretty standard RPG that does nothing to break the mold, doing things that were cliché and trite that even its progenitors had grown out of by this point. My brother and I could call plot points in advance like the fate of the old woman in the concentration camp, and whenever the plot need a push forward, the female lead Colette inexplicably tripped into progressing the plot, something that could barely work even in a parody plot. Not to mention the overarching plot was generic as all get out. The gameplay was passable, but the story made me mistrust the Tales of... series as whole. Perhaps it might be possible for me to like it if I went in with a different mindset, but as of now, it is just too bland for me. Looking up some reviews for it, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to dislike the plot.

After all, Tales of Symphonia has had a sequel by now, of which I have not heard any sort of opinion on. I guess no one really wanted the story continued so much as the gameplay.


Most Any Winter Olympic Game
Pictured: Nagano Winter Olympics '98 (Nintendo 64) and Winter Olympic Games (Sega Genesis)

If this had been a Top 15 Blandest Video games list, these two Olympic games might have made the cut, but their placement in reference to each other would have been arbitrary and they are both really indicative of a bigger trend in gaming.

For the most part, save series like the Mario sports titles, you only ever really need a rather modern sports title to scratch your itch of a specific sport. If your Madden is recent enough, you don't really need to buy the newer ones. This sort of leaves us with a big bag of games made for the Winter Olympics, none of which are really worth owning. Even the Olympics knew its games were bad and trusted the brand recognition of Mario and Sonic to carry it in recent years, and the only reason those are any good really seems to be because of the dream events they include where they basically just make their own games up.

Meanwhile, realistic winter Olympic games are tasked with making a bunch of sports titles all in one game, reducing the love and care each might need to become excellent on their own, as its basically becomes a minigame collection but with decent sized sports games. So many winter events are similar as well, with skiing spanning multiple events, bobsled and luge being basically the same, and so many variations on ice skating that it's hard to remain interesting. And curling, which is its own problem. Then comes the gameplay, which no matter how hard one tries, the Ski Jump is almost always going to be rather bland.

Winter Olympic games are just tasked with adapting a bland property, as even the Winter Olympics are basically just the less popular Olympics. Almost every Olympic event people care about is in the Summer. Thing is, Winter Olympic games are simply not bland enough to be offensive, and sometimes one or two games squeeze out something interesting.

They certainly can't hold a candle to the most bland game in all of video game history...

1: Yoshi
System: Wii Virtual Console (originally NES)
Genre: Puzzle

Remember how I said this was the list of the Blandest games I've ever played, and not the worst? Well, what if a game is so unbelievably bland that it could even top any other bad game that dares challenge it?

Yoshi is a deceptive little creature, wearing the cute dinosaur as a mascot for an absolutely abysmal puzzle game. I have no true favorite genre of video game, but I sometimes say Puzzle as it is a genre I really do enjoy. Yoshi is the antithesis to enjoyable puzzle games. Yoshi is offensively bland, and even when it went on sale for around 30 cents on the Wii U Virtual Console, I warned my brother it wasn't worth that price. He didn't listen, and even he now agrees it wasn't worth it.

Yoshi is, indeed, technically a puzzle game. There are four lanes, and two enemies will fall in side-by-side pairs rather slowly to fill them. There are four enemy types so you can pretty much assign an enemy to a lane, and eggshells sometimes fall instead which you can use to sandwich all the enemies in a lane for a lot of points. In Game A, you play until you fill a lane too high, which is a nigh impossible feat if done on purpose. It's hard to do by not pressing anything. It's so easy to match enemies that there is no challenge in this mode, as you can go on forever without issue. The only thing to really mess you up is trying to get big stacks between eggshells for a lot of points, although its technically easier and smarter to earn those points through gradual matching.

Game B is slightly more of a game with a challenge. Now, rather than just getting points, the goal is to completely clear the playing field. There is likely some predetermined point where you are meant to have done it each level, as if you don't do so, you'll keep getting in situations where there is one enemy type left, and then the next piece that drops is that enemy type and a different one, and so on like that forever. This mode at least seems easier to fail at.

There is an argument to be made that this game is for kids, thus explaining its simplicity.  I'm no fool, I know certain games are for certain demographics. I'm not going to put Bratz: Forever Diamonds, Barney's Hide & Seek or Donkey Kong Jr. Math on here. But Yoshi does not qualify as one of these. Young children will either be unable to do puzzle games like Yoshi at all or find the game too bland to play. Children need bombastic feedback from their games to keep playing, and Yoshi would be a terrible attention getter if young children were expected to play it. I'm sure there are modern young kids who can enjoy and play well enough iPhone puzzle games adults enjoy despite being technically in the demographic for playing Yoshi.

Yoshi is a boring game marketed towards an uninterested audience that lives on only because Nintendo plopped their cute dinosaur on the title.

Yoshi is both the Worst and the Blandest game I have ever played, and I doubt it will ever be topped.

Behind the Plots of 2015 Part 3: Not-A-Reptilian-Conspiracy, The Alruthine Plot

So this one has been a long time coming.

So long coming, in fact, that the big reveals this blogpost had to share have already been given in chatzy. Reveals that most likely led to this tardy blogpost since I wasn't itching to share them! But, we're here now, and here they come again, as well as new information never before shared about this big ol' plot of mine!

So, the impetus of this plot can be found in this exact moment, on what appears to be Halloween morning or the night before. One day, in chatzy, Jumpropeman got a little frustrated with his typos...

Venge: Actually, truth be told, Piers Anthony's style is somewhat similar in some regards to your own. You may actually like it, jokes aside.

Jumpropeman: the name sounds vaguely familiar, but not enough to attribute descriptors too

Jumpropeman: to

Jumpropeman: BLAJBOA:BJAB{DAJO

Jumpropeman: that's what I meant to say

Jumpropeman: Blajboa Bjab Dajo is my new character for 2015

Venge: Spoilers, JRM! D: I didn't need to know about Blajboa and her parents Bjab and Dajo.

Venge: Yet.

At that moment, my plans for 2015 were quite different. I planned to RP the two Mammoths, an Exeggutor, Keahi, and so many other characters... but that single moment changed all that. Plus, a look at the Big Bar Brawl 2 also completely derailed almost every plan I had made for 2015 in favor of the Professors Hector and Vector from the Brawl, and these then only-existing-in-a-joke characters Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo.

Naturally, the moment I heard these names I did not have any clue what they were, what I would do with them or what their plot would be, and they were still in the works by the time end of season epilogues were coming, hence the focus on Hector and Vector and Theodore and Inch instead. But, the ideas were stewing, they'd just take a long time to take form...

First, I had to figure out what these characters even WERE. Ideas were floated about in my head, most of them tracing back to three important letters: BOA. No matter how far out of the box I tried to think, that part of Blajboa's name that tied her to a real world snake kept pulling the species back to a reptilian similarity. I never once considered them being a human species or a pre-established species, just for some reason with names like these it felt like they had to be something new, and unfortunately I had a lot of real world weight on my mind in trying to come up with a new animal.

I remember in one of the Axe Cop physical comics Ethan says how hard he found it to create new animals, and the new animals are all very "Jackelope-esque". Creatures with other creature's parts. I'm sure many proto-alruthines probably were like this too. Of the rejected ideas I can recall two: one was a centipede like creature that lived in the skies, based off an old concept I had where flying centipedes lived on the cusp of Earth's atmosphere, and the only time humans ever saw them was when rockets smashed into them trying to break into space. The idea was always meant to be ridiculous back when it was born in middle school, and I don't like having things in RP that should have been discovered or known about sooner... hence the move of the species underground. I considered people might think about the fact I RP'd ground last year as Dakota and now had something living underground, but even if it had come up it's like... why would Dakota mention it? Especially since Alruthine concepts placed them as living group-lifes in very small clusters throughout the world. Dakota probably met a few as they traveled but there's probably never been more than one Alruthine colony per continent as they are slow breeders with strong family commitment hard-wired into their brain. Even Blajboa was compelled to come home after leaving her kin long ago.

The other reject species idea I do recall was one I almost rescued from being rejected when the matter of a hotel receptionist came up. An almost Lamia like creature with a lower body of an immensely long snake, but a body made of plasma. It's head would be almost like a sun, with tendrils extending off of the glowing center that it used as arms, as it would have no true limbs on the rest of its body. I miiiiiight have made it a character elsewhere even just so the idea didn't die, like one of those strange restaurant owners Shimmer met in the April blogposts (still like the idea of Pinecone guy). But soon, the species took shape, and one thing I seemed to always want was it to be really REALLY long. Alruthines were born, as long burrowing scaly things. I quickly realized it had some parallels to worms, and when I tried to develop her biology... to be realistic, I unfortunately had to borrow a lot from them. Alruthines have light receptors on their bodies which they use to see rather than eyes (making it hard for them to see small details, hence why Blajboa couldn't read small print), they have a hydrostatic skeleton, a segmented body... they borrow some from tardigrades in that they have cryptobiosis, but their organ system is almost completely original as they are intellectually developed and thus must have the long brains that serve as their weakness.

So we got the species. Now we need the culture. Alruthines live underground, so they must communicate in sound. One thing I made sure of when picking Alruthine names is I had a way to say them without much articulation and can be said in a sort of rumble. I sound dumb doing them, but they work! The amount of syllables in a name also came to mean which generation an Alruthine was from. Bjab and Dajo are the only two syllable names because they are the broodmother and father, and thus far older than their children. Akljadlk and Vahvhetmx are older generations than the rest, but still not quit on par with Bjab and Dajo. Jirunbuf and Jisadjok are close kin because of their name similarity, the same going for Ugrsteh and Uysnskow. Almost all other children have three syllable names to show they are the "next generation" of Alruthines. The colony structure was quickly made to compare to things like ants or termites but with higher intelligence, hence independence of choice and a subsistent broodmother. Brood being the name is tied very much to things like X-Men's Brood and their concept, and Alruthine use the term "kin" to refer to each other as they have little concept of relationship beyond "father", "broodmother", and "everyone else in my species". Brother, sister, uncle, that's all nonexistant to them, especially since even though Blajboa and Jirunbuf are ages apart, she would treat him like an uncle despite him technically being a brother.

The ancient aspect of the species was done to make them seem less humanoid and also make it clear how removed they are from surface life. It also somewhat ties to their eventual name, Alruthine. I was President of the Prolixity Club at my high school, a club me and a friend of mine made when I took an interest in unusual words. Words like lanigerous, cornigerous, adscititious, and more entered my vocabulary through this club and have all appeared in my RP. But one thing we did for fun was make up our own word that we were meant to spread. The word we chose was Alruthine, which sounded real enough, which we decided meant ancient. The idea was to see if our neologism could be spread into other people's lexicon, and I guess making a species with the name would help for that! So with a name that meant ancient and other factors, Alruthines were given long slow lives, especially since they had cryptobiosis to keep them alive even when they were almost killed. Their regeneration time was a bit sped up for RP, as leaving Blajboa out of the picture for a realistic timeframe would mean no Alruthine plot at all! The race was also given a long lifespan as a way to justify certain things about them learning human languages and how to weave their body together. These things all took DECADES for each Alruthine to learn, and the youngest Alruthine we ever meet (the Brute) has difficulty holding together. 

Incidentally, the Brute, the Sand Gunner Alruthines... they don't have names. The species doesn't receive names until they are off a certain age and its kin need a way to refer to it. Young Alruthines have a habit of dying as they dig into bad places or don't know the world well enough to live in it, and even these decades old Alruthines that can make bodies can't really speak. Another thing: Alruthines can't say the "th" sound because of the precision it requires with their tongue against teeth that are just part of their body. They already struggle to compress air out like a lung to make the voice, so none have really mastered how to give them the teeth and tongue necessary for the "th" sound, so many just settle for the "d" sound instead. Bjab and Vahvhetmx manage them because of the surgery Doc Gerbil did that basically solidified their bodies into the human shape through a painful and nearly irreversible procedure. Alruthines also have issues with human language, mostly grammar things, but they calls humans People Folks mostly because they understand "people" mostly means any sentient creature, so they call groups of sapient beings people, but humans specifically People Folks. They have no actual name for their species, and its a bit sad the name given to them can't even be said by them due to the "th". Other things include calling young things "little ones", which is likely what The Brute and Sand Gunners would be known as until they got their name. It helps that so few children at a time mean if someone says "little ones", an Alruthine often knows which kin is being referred to.

Next came... how would they interact on the surface with people? Blajboa's periscope intro was thought up rather quickly, but I realized quickly they'd need better bodies to interact with the bar with. Alruthines already can probably trace their evolutionary path back to early reptiles (although they aren't quite reptiles), and the letters BOA came back to suggest the humanoid lizard forms. Because of their rough skin, they could not wind and sew themselves together into shapes that looked human, so they pushed it to look more like lizard people instead. Naturally, people didn't like that, and they never truly fit in. Blajboa's backstory involves her leaving with a group of Alruthines to explore the world away from her family... and a sour interaction with humans in South America lead to the others all being killed. Part of her heading home to find her parents was to just be with her kind again. She did, however, meet a wild scientist (possibly even Nathan Cardinal, the guy who designed Reject!) who treated her well enough that she feared humans less and he named her species Alruthine to boot.

So this is all the species I groundwork I probably had before it became time to actually plan a plot for these things. Well, naturally, some of them like the surface, as their intelligent brains crave advancement and new experiences. Humans are rocketing forward in technology, and they want in! So obviously they pretend to be people!

Uh...

Uh-oh, I remember all those changeling and doppelganger plots from last year. Last thing people want is another "WHO CAN I TRUST" "COPYCATS EVERYWHERE!" plot. Well... they obviously can't look like humans on their own, so they need something to make them fit in. Let's make sure Blajboa can hear human imitators too do to her sensitivity to sound from living underground (which would soon become their weakness as a species, later evolving into the vulnerability to high-pitch tech whines. You might barely remember Shen had a whine like that and that was meant to come into play more if the plot progressed differently, and if so many people hadn't bought the product! I'm so glad Ko and crew picked up on them though, that made me and Hector happy :3) Anyway, not-a-lizards. They needed flesh... and the ideas poured in. Skin Suits came quickly, and I tried to make them as not gross as possible as the idea developed. For example: The Skin Man became the livestock for all that flesh. Sure, its one suffering tortured brute, but its better than a bunch of dead people. Doc Gerbil was quickly linked to Skin Man as a mad doctor was needed and I wanted to end Doc Gerbil as a character somehow. More on these characters in subsections later. But I made sure the flesh grafts for Skin Man weren't gross either, usually from dead people killed not for the express purpose of skin removal. Small other details came up: the idea of different levels of success in the Alruthine community as humans...

And then came Bill Clinton.

People may remember I had an idea in 2012 for a plot where Bill Clinton closes off the block around the bar to try and curb the dangers the Kobbers posed to the world. He was meant to be an antagonist we couldn't just beat up, as killing the president would only prove them right for locking up the Kobbers and the Vice would just continue the war. Sailor's talk on Oprah was meant to lead in to that plot before the idea was killed. But... I wanted us to fight Bill Clinton... and what's a better success than being President of the USA? Bjab was given the role, and Dajo as Monica Lewinsky, their "sex scandal" suddenly a cover-up for the fact that ol' Bill was lonely amidst humans all day and night and wanted to see his true mate again. I'm sure I could BS up an explanation for how the scandal worked with this backstory but its way more effort than its worth, but I can make it work! Going to the Bill Clinton Museum in Little Rock made me realize that he probably still needed a human counterpart, so both Bill and later Mark Cuban when he was picked have real name-sharers in ZFRP who are living humble lives while someone uses their information and history to go to great heights.

So now we have the species, the motives, and things like their war against technology and more filled in the gaps to make their plight a complex one. They're dealing with a real obstacle to their existence, just in the wrong way. Some other things were added on soon, like Alruthine being able to redistribute their body mass to basically act like Mr. Fantastic but with limited mass (and hence why they were multiple miles long. People's intestines are super long already and even though Alruthines don't build bodies with internal organs when trying to be humanoid, they still need a lot of mass to sew together a stable human shape). Blajboa would enter the Brawl as the way to kick off the plot, although delays made it make a little less sense as Moyusfuy and Mark dragged their heels for no reason after seeing Blajboa reveal the truth of their species...

But something else came up. Bill Clinton a lizard person? That sounds just like... The Reptilian Conspiracy. Which is what I called the plot in my images folder as I realized the parallels. The reason Moyusfuy disguised himself as a conspiracy nutter when he showed up is so that anyone but Kobbers wouldn't take his talk of Reptilians seriously. When the parallels were noticed, I decided to roll with it instead of ignore it and try to pretend there is no connection, and basically the conspiracy is meant to be born from people actually seeing Alruthines on the surface. They aren't alien reptile men, they are underground worm-like creatures! They only want power in the same way humans do, and even when Bjab was Bill Clinton, many people say Clinton is one of better presidents in recent years, scandal ignored of course. Even Vahvhetmx only wanted "domination" in  the marketplace through legitimate means, he just couldn't handle the species-threatening technology through capitalism forever.

So uh... Names! Names are next. Still haven't mentioned where I got Alruthine names from besides Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo. Well... I got them from pretty much the same way! I combed old chatzy logs and chatzy madness for other times people just randomly typed letters either through frustration or for humor. At first, I tried to make more Alruthine names myself, going to space chat and mashing the keyboard, but I didn't get any I liked. I also swore from then on I couldn't use any I made myself, as I'd be doing it on purpose, but old ones I did were fair game. For a long time I watched chatzy in hopes people would make more names... but it seemed like everyone just stopped doing it! Even by the time the season started some Alruthines were nameless as I struggled to assemble a group of names, and that's when I used chatzy madness to fill in the last few. Without further ado, here are the names of Alruthines besides Blajboa, Bjab, and Dajo, and the people who smashed their keyboards to make these names (although they are isolated from all surrounding gibberish)

Gewjogfka- Harpy
Baofbawwig- Jumpropeman
Akljadlk- Harpy
Moyusfuy- SK
Uysnskow- Bree

Ugrsteh-Spy
Jisadjok- Spy

Jirunbuf- Steel Komodo
Vahvhetmx- Draco

Ever since the first keyboard mash that made the plot, I decided the names were going to all be this sort of gibberish-like language. It was meant to embody that strange disconnect we get where we see a bunch of letters in a row that don't mean anything but look like they could mean something. Names like Akljadlk were a bit of a stretch, but then ones like Jirunbuf fit like a glove! Otherness was meant to be an important part of the plot, hence why Blajboa always stood around, not understanding what was wrong with not sitting. She'd stare with her head but not with her false eyes. Her species did not see what was wrong about reusing skin to make skin suits, that kind of thing. Bjab at least came around to understand the skin suits were bad, but felt them a necessary evil with no alternative at the time. The names were meant to be just readable enough to be words but still odd enough that they'll never mean anything in any language besides Alruthine.

So um... yeah! That's how you create a species! I'm sure I left something out, but that might as well be my catchphrase by now! Let's move on to the plot itself and the characters therein... But to do so, we must first start with four other characters: Theodore Rex, Inch High Private Eye, Hector, and Vector.

Strap in, this is a looooong blogpost!

THEODORE AND INCH

HURRAH! A SUBHEADER!  Finally!

So, lately, as I RP more serious characters with personalities that aren't just humor vehicles, I have been introducing characters who are pretty much just humor vehicles. Year 1 Jumpropeman was a jokester so that wasn't an issue, but as he faded into the background, new guys had to step up. Reject was an interesting mix of joker and character, but he was also a bit too nice to make some of the barbed comments I sometimes want jokers to make. Theodore kind of is too, but we had Jasper and Vector for mean jokes. But my point is, Theodore made his comeback with his new partner Inch to fill in the Joke Character slot, which will be filled by Sonic Man and the Lightning Bolt Society (which, let me assure you, will not be aping the Alliance of Evil. They originally were considered as possible fite club opponents for them, but I've thought of a direction for them I like, and I hope you can trust me not to copy someone's idea whole cloth.)

So that is the very basic idea behind why they came back, but they were added to the plot because I wanted to add a new element to my RP plots: a mystery! One that can be solved but might not be but you can still enjoy the plot regardless as it is more of an epilogue for those interested. I often had vague ideas of what the clues would be but I threw in a lot of details in the INCH HIGH INVESTIGATIONS to try and make them not straight forward. Pre-writing them would have probably benefited the time and pacing of the investigations, but I struggled with the mechanics for a while. If they could just search the entire crimescene its basically not much of an investigation, so time limits and a search structure was added, which I mulled over a lot. Ultimately, I feel even the clues that weren't picked up on were non-essential ones, even though I somehow thought they wouldn't find the skinsuits in the first investigation (and somehow didn't expect the characters reacting in horror! Am I secretly an Alruthine too?)

You might also remember one plot almost didn't have an investigation afterward, that being the confrontation with Mark, but that's because that was already cobbled together from two separate events I'll detail later. You also might remember the Hector Labs event having almost an entirely computer based investigation... that Springtrap tried to completely undo by just downloading it all. Trying to mix up the way we did investigating was an imperfect process certainly.

Theodore certainly came back this year partly for his role of being the cop who insists on doing the investigation properly, and if Mark hadn't died, imprisonment would have depended on the Kobbers following those rules. I also wanted to "wrap-up" Theodore. Although my 2012 newcomers didn't really have unfinished business save Izzy, I still want them to have a full chance like a character from some other year might have to be explored. Phantomon will likely always be around in some capacity as a branch of the JRM Crew, but also as a consistent embodiment of Death for those who need it. I mean, we've had tons of embodiments of Death around ZFRP, but they come and go. JRM and Phantomon stand as your Spirits to continue doing their job as long as I'm around!

But 2015 wasn't the first time I considered bringing the Dinosaur back. Let's flashback to a plot I almost did in 2014, one that Deckplot pushed out of the way, but was almost my first Serious multi-event plot outside of FITE WEEK. A serious plot... centered around Theodore Rex for some reason.

See, Theodore Rex's origins in RP are simple. I like goofy characters, and as I watched Theodore Rex on Netflix, the temptation to RP him became so great that I started RPing him WHILE I WATCHED THE MOVIE. I don't remember much of the late movie because I was dozing off and in RP I RPed him as a more likable fellow with less bad jokes. Yes, even though he told tons of bad jokes, he somehow has less in RP. He's also more naive and juvenile in RP, which I think works better than the character in the movie, especially since movie Theodore tells the same kind of jokes, just doesn't have the right personality for it.

His in character origin was lightly kept the same, with his creators New Eden pushed back into the past, and in current RP they're pretty much mostly harmless... but had Theodore Plot been done, we would have learned that the genetic creation of Dinosaur-human hybrids had gone down dark roads since Theodore left... and Theodore, as a new special SPACE COP, would be sent by New Eden to round up some of his Dinosaur Hybrid kin. It would have focused almost solely on the ZFS, as it was pointed out at one point that we mostly only used the Fantasy side rather than the Space side. The plot would start mostly silly, but by the end it would get serious, and here are the Dinosaurs we would have met:

All the Dinosaur Men were from recognizable (or, well, licensed) works. The plot's first event would involve Super Dinosaur in the robot suit there, from a comic of the same name. He was basically New Eden's first attempt at making a human dinosaur hybrid, and would have been running around the halls of the ZFS being a destructive dino. A robot suit dinosaur may still be a cool character for a fite club or something some day, but this would be a light-hearted start where we had to break his suit so Theodore could arrest him and send him back.

Next would be B.P. Richfield from the Dinosaurs sitcom. Repurposed into a general business man, Richfield would be in charge of the ZFS Mall that was visited a few times, and he'd be trying to muscle out the Kobbers from buying there when he learned he was being pursued by Theodore. They'd be barred from shopping, and any Kobber own businesses would be pressured to leave. This confrontation would be mostly character interaction based, where the Kobbers have to get to home without violence or else he could throw the book back at them and get them in trouble with Mall Security or something higher up the law foodchain.

General Galapagos (from the cartoon The Terrible Thunderlizards) would be a more lighthearted romp after the social struggle of Richfield. Galapagos would want to make an army to try and make reptiles the superior race... but he has no one like him in his army. Instead, he has a bunch of regular unaltered reptiles in armor with weapons on them. His plot would involve a string of these armor wearing reptiles attacking places and the Kobbers having to trace them back to Galapagos for the final confrontation with the Reptile Army. Amongst the animals would be whiptails with dangerous whiptails, crocodiles with steel jaws, and some actual Steel Komodos!

After Galapagos was wrapped though, things would get serious. Theodore would be repeatedly targeted by hyper violent attacks from Stegron (from Marvel Comics). Resenting his hybrid nature, he wouldn't be attacking Theodore out of avoiding arrest, but out of wanting to destroy anything that reminds him he's torn between a dinosaur body and human mind. Theodore would be fine of course, but Stegron would not pull punches and would use brutal tactics. He might've been the only one we had to kill rather than arrest as he'd even hurt himself to escape capture. Stegron was really preparation emotionally for the last character.

Ernie Watson, a triceratops detective from Anonymous Rex. Ernie was meant to be a dark reflection of what Theodore could be, and his confrontation would be more of a conversation than a battle. Probably a small clutch of Kobbers, Theodore absent, would confront him, and Ernie would talk about how there's no way he could fit in a world that will never feel right to him. If a Kobber had brought a weapon, he might even grab their hand and press that weapon to his head, asking with a casual air to be killed. He'd lay out the truth of New Eden, and reveal the arrested Dinosaurs were being sent back to be exterminated as failures. What would happen next was never planned, but likely New Eden wouldn't survive the truth, whether by Kobber action or the word getting out. Theodore would have kept his light-heartedness though, even with Ernie saying something about Theodore's jolly nature giving him a small bit of hope... if he wasn't dead or otherwise indisposed at the end.

So, I don't want my joke characters weighed down with stuff like that. They may have whispers of complexity and they certainly have solid personalities and histories, but I don't want to anchor stuff that can take away from them being funny guys. I think I said something similar about anchoring JRM with too much history, but even he's allowed to get more than guys like Theodore or Sonic Man as he's my username-sharing character.

So that as an unrelated scrapped plot, and now I can delete those images! But Theodore was planned for a comeback for a while, 2015 just ended up the year... and he got a partner too! Inch was very much pulled from a binge watch of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, where his basic detective personality coupled with a variety of small jokes made him appeal to me. I tried to watch some of his old series but not much of it exists easily available out there, but I tried to make him more like his old version rather than the reimagining from Birdman. I've been giving more and more characters partners so they can speak more freely, make more jokes, and deliver exposition fluidly instead of jutting it in somewhere. And Inch was small enough that he could appear most anywhere and almost reasonably be on Theodore's person at all times. Inch was a bit more serious than his partner and a little rougher around the edges, but both were still buffoons! The missing persons story was as flimsy a reason to get them to Vegas as it was in-canon, as Finkerton and the NYPD both wanted rid of their cop clowns. The missing people, as revealed later, were all Alruthines who had a bad experience with high pitched tech noise and broke their skinsuits, and whether it was in public or not, it still seemed more believable to the police that they were missing rather than they exploded into reptilian-looking creatures and ran off.

Theodore being a non-killer is based on his movie I believe, and of course Inch as a Hannah-Barbara cartoon never killed a guy, so they were meant to be good cops who could arrest villains instead of killing them. Now, after the plot is over, they'll likely just hang around Vegas at all the other casinos with their crazy attractions, living off the unexpected Cookie Cutter Business that fell into Theodore's lap one day. They may still cameo if the LVPD are called upon. I think it was mentioned once that Inch had a gun, but since he's so small and the gun was scaled to his size, its bullets were probably less dangerous than Theodore's claws. With the expanding cast of JRM joke characters like Soar, Melvin, and the Court of Cameos, it's unlikely these two will go with us to our next setting, but I hope they had a good run, and they allowed me to do the second side of Alruthine plot with their presence.

Enjoy Beautiful Las Vegas you two, you earned it.

HECTOR, VECTOR, AND HECTOR LABS

I don't recall when exactly, but something drew my attention back to the Big Bar Brawl 2, the Brawl where I decided to reference more of ROB's history thanks to his mysterious orb by bringing in the two professors from his source game. Now, I've seen a few supposed rebirths of Hector on the internet, pairing him with the character from Mole Mania of all things, but I basically decided to keep Hector as close to his game as I could, where he'd sleepwalk around and you had to protect him. Also, I recently bought Gyromite, so we'll see how that plays when it gets here. Vector, however, is sort of the pisstake off Hector, a younger, aloof, and cynical fellow. If you reread BBB2, he mentions he has a wife! I bet you can guess what happened to her.

Anyway, an idea tickled my brain, and that idea was to bring them back. I took the old pictures I drew of them and colored them in, and I basically made their personalities off the template from their BBB2 cameos. Initially they had no ties to Alruthine plot as I believe I came up with them before I did Blajboa and the gang, but the technology angle saw a perfect place to rope them in. The Professor's search for funding seems to have just sprung up somewhere along the line, can't remember where, but one thing I wanted to do with bringing them back is pay homage to our lost user Godbot, and the first BBB champion ROB. I'm a big nut for old stuff, like early cartoons and video games, and the real world ROB always appealed to me. I've been looking to buy one even though I don't plan to hook it up ever, but the prices are a bit crazy even on standalone models. I'm also good with him in Smash Bros (and Game and Watch too, go figure, and I enjoy the old Game and Watch games as well) so ROB was in my heart even before Zoofights. The tribute to ROB and Godbot also came with me doing something else that I felt at least needed some acknowledgment: Sintendo vs. Nintendo. In Zoofights we've called what is basically the same company by both names, and unlike Stretch Lizards it never fell out of use to call it Sintendo, mostly thanks to Pit. Probably due to the Croctopus time stuff, Sintendo and Nintendo must both exist in our universe, as on multiple occasions characters have played both Game Brutes or Game Boys, Mario Kart or ROB Kart, and other counterparts that kind of show that these companies are both different and the same. Without explaining too much, I thought that of course they'd be competing in the video game sector, and ROB really wasn't the kind of mascot Mario was, hence the Professors getting the boot. If not for Sintendo being such a huge part of Pit's backstory, I might've seen if it was okay to completely bankrupt Sintendo or imply worse about its situation, but as it stands, Sintendo and Nintendo is kinda something you want to say "yeah sure they're the same" but so many in-RP examples prove why that can't be.

Hector and Vector appealed to me due to their obscurity and the fact that I could easily explain why they are in a video game. I've mentioned in the past I don't want my characters to ever really encounter their source material when they are from something since it kinda cheapens the character and provides an unrealistic situation, but Hector and Vector were just self-inserts from the designers, although Vector grew into his palette swap appearance and hated every second of it.

Shen was their way of staying afloat enough that they aren't a pity case the Kobbers would just solve immediately and I was so happy to see people buying the phone or making an event out of funding it. I was afraid more characters would try to dump money on them and declare it solved, and although I don't claim to know too much about business, I did read up on it to try and understand it a bit better for their meetings, which turned out more detailed than even I imagined as I thought people might not be receptive to it. A business probably wants to split its investors anyway if they want any degree of control over their product after all, so money dumping wouldn't work.

Hector's narcolepsy is mostly a reason to explain why he'd ever be sleepwalking in public, and Hector and Vector are very much played as actual old people, where Hector needed medication and could never hope to hold his own in combat. The ROB Revolver was invented in case the professors ever got in battle and it saw a little use, but mostly they used their creations. Even if Twisted Metal was hella delayed, having the ROB Warrior opened a few doors for the professors on plots. MAC was also kind of meant for that role but also meant to be... well, hold on.

In addition to all the ROB prototypes and updates for new systems, MAC was one of the few other creations we'd see. At one point, I planned to enter Vector into the BBB to try and get the prize money for the company, using MAC as his weapon. He'd also sorta cheat and have his ROB Revolver as a piece of MAC that could be removed, but only after MAC was completely broken. MAC went through a few name changes that were all short acronyms, although he was once called WYATT and I don't think that ever got the full acronym treatment. After the Brawl idea was scrapped, MAC was kept around  and shown a few times to foreshadow that he'd be the main opponent during the Hector Labs event of Alruthine plot. I'm glad someone out there made a giant intimidating version of the cliche toy robot.

I'm sure the idea that would be Shu evolved from me imagining the April blogpost that would be about them, and now that I actually work at a retirement community, it seems a lot less farfetched than all the investors thought it would be in RP. So many residents there have iPads, iPhones, and iPads. You gotta remember that our new old generation is going to be people born in the sixties or so, and they are much more receptive to technology. I've been meaning to do a Professors epilogue that shows them with the results of the Shu Black Friday release, but the Professors may still cameo a bit next year and we may just hear about that in RP instead. Shen though is meant to bridge the gap between old Professors and new ideas, and a robot phone certainly seems plausible enough as both a successful product and an extension of the brand. It was hard to find a good pic to pass of as Shen, as I wanted it simple but not too outside of the ROB aesthetic. The only one I could find had a sushi design on its belly, lightly-excused in RP, but it would probably be explained as a sunrise over red hills if you ever asked for the corporate explanation from the Professors. Of course, there are variations in design. Shen talked and walked a bit more than expected, as in "not just to display the product", but that's not a bad thing of course.

Hector was given a vocal tic of saying things three times, as he is a bit of a slow thinker and uses it to buy his brain time. Vector was given a bit of a detached and misanthropic personality to differentiate him from Jasper, my other grump. Vector will do good things if he feel he should, but not really because it's the right thing to do. When he was called about Parsee being missing, it wasn't him being all "MISSING GIRL? VECTOR TO THE RESCUE!" but more "Parsee's a business partner and people are using Shens to track her so we have multiple obligations here".

One thing I've tried to avoid in RP is tokenism, making a character something just so I can point at it and say I have diverse characters, or that my character is more unique because I added this to them. I know my worldview and I don't want to represent a type of people improperly just to make my character more exotic, so when I made Hector gay, I made sure to really sit down and think about what that means for the character. One thing is Hector is in the toy industry, and he really likes being around kids because he enjoys seeing his products make people happy. Hector is also an old man who grew up in our cultural climate. Between failed loves and his desire to make his dreams come true, Hector knew he'd have to suppress that part of him. To emphasize just how much his creations and ideas meant to him, his backstory is about shutting off an entire part of himself that might've risked that goal back in a time when being a homosexual man carried a huge negative stigma. A lot of characters I make have big backstories that influence small things they do, and sometimes they go unsaid. If not for Satori we might have never heard directly about Hector's sexuality, although if anyone ever quipped that the Professors were in a relationship, Vector would've responded dryly "I'm not his type." They certainly never had an interest like that in each other, but it's an easy joke to make. Hector is my first step into making a character with a sexuality I do not have personal experience with, a small step to be sure, but I certainly didn't want to throw myself in the deep end and have a character burst in the door and yell they're gay in a stereotypical way. Hopefully I did it justice and hopefully I can explore the nuances of non-heterosexual characters more as my craft develops. I don't want to just slap a label on a character and pretend that makes them more interesting automatically. I tried to keep the three sins of heterosexuals writing homosexuals in mind to:

1: The character feels the need to reaffirm their sexuality at every moment. They offer the information casually in conversation and bring it up when its not relevant. How else are you supposed to know they aren't straight?
2: The character is sexually promiscuous, willing to sleep with someone at the drop of a hat. They are intensely sexual, constantly groping or kissing a lover no matter where they are as if to say "yes, we are homosexual".
3: They are automatically attracted to anyone of the same sex and will flirt with anyone save the deliberately ugly. Often, they do so as soon as they meet them or slip it in randomly during conversation. They have no preferences in the appearance or personality of a potential lover.

Might've got those wrong, but whatever. I also didn't want Vector's windfall of a large amount of moolah treated just like "lol tons of money NICE". Between them being realistic old people and these aspects, I was trying to put humans into RP, their robots were their weird sides really. Otherwise these might be two gents you meet on the streets, despite their cartoonish noses.

The Prototype ROBs I think emerged as an idea when I say a Project M reskin of ROB, although I think it was a fanmade Wii one rather than their official Virtual Boy one, although both were used in the event. Santa ROB was added explicitly because I saw it in Chatzy Madness, and ROB 64 was just a cute Star Fox reference really. I thought he'd be the easiest to write in combat, but that turned out to be Wii U ROB. I used all the Sintendo names for obvious reasons, but I refer to them here with the ones we'd understand in real life :P Anyway, Wii U ROB was found on this pretty cool thing called Redesigning Super Mario: http://bonnyjohn.com/rsmb/ Wii U ROB almost replaced Wii ROB before I realized Wii ROB, despite having the most basic design of the reimagined ROBs, also had cool potential with motion controls, and we certainly had the attendance to justify all possible ROB ideas plus MAC and the two Alruthines. My thought process for the attacks of most ROBs was to just use their system gimmicks offensively, but Wii U ROB's appearance and the gimmick of Wii U not transferring to combat well led to him being a pushy butler type instead. The ROB we saw in Hector's nightmare and the Agony battle was taking from Subspace Emissary, and he almost joined the Alruthine event as a ROB for the battle, but there was only one from Smash that looked different enough to be used and it didn't fit the theming found with the other robots.

The Professors fell off in the second half of the year, partly it was meant to make their disappearance more dramatic when we discovered it, but also because they got funded a little too quick and they really weren't attached to the Kobber life like most characters. They don't want to spend most of their time in a bar, especially since they have work to do, and being locked out of a lot of combat due to who they are also made them less present.

All in all, I liked RPing them, and I feel only Shu remains as a loose end. It would be very odd if Godbot came back and RPed ROB, but one thing I tried to avoid was saying anything about that ROB besides the references to the shared past of the Professors with it.

And there you have it! Alruthine plot was great fun to do and...

Wait, you want me to actually talk about the Alruthine CHARACTERS too?

Fine...

Guess we'll do them in order of appearance, at least event wise.

Before we begin though, a broad statement: for many Alruthines, its sort of a chicken-and-the-egg scenario for whether the art came first or I found the art for a character. Jisadjok certainly was made and then I remember picking up the old image of the rejected character Juan Carlos as I realized he was a perfect fit, and I always wanted Gewjogfka to be a chameleon scientist, but I could only find Chameleon warrior lizards before remembering Francis exists. Also: AWFUL LOT OF LIZARD PORN. Lizardpeople fall under the furry umbrella so I saw a lot of nasty naked lizards trying to find cool lizard pics. Almost every minion Alruthine was a cool piece of art I found with no real character to tie it to.

Alruthine plot had a few false starts, but it was always meant to be kicked off by Blajboa revealing her species and their existence through the televised BBB5. Didn't expect her to lose so badly, but I kinda glad she did, as with her low placement comes almost no questions about what she is save a lizard-looking thing with Mr. Fantastic powers from people who don't follow RP but read fites. The pre-plot teasers at least seemed to make people want me to do the plot, and I'm surprised the plot didn't suffer much for it, although it probably helped that most of the plot was contained in the events itself rather than having too many after event scenes like Deckplot did.

The pre-season blogpost was meant to give them a bit more character, which was nice since some like Akljadlk never got to show their personality during their events, but it also was to give them more character in my own head, so I could write them better and know them better. Telling yourself a character is going to be a certain way is much different than seeing it in practice.

I suppose I should apologize somewhere that I use the Alruthine names with such a casual air when probably no one else remembers them as well as I do. When you think about a plot with such oddly named characters for months on ends, the names feel like real words, so I can't help but think of the character on name alone. Hopefully the later sections or my character profiles can help you figure out who I'm talking about if you're having trouble remembering on name alone.

So now... Event 1

MOYUSFUY, UYSNSKOW, AND UGRSTEH

I'm fairly certain the designs of these guys came before aspects of their personalities, as they are all from the same set of images by a very talented artist on deviantart. Moyusfuy and Ugrsteh likely would have been about the same (Ugrsteh I wanted to be more like a dinosaur and he might have been the first of the group found.) Uysnskow was almost entirely based off her appearance and the bone weaponry found though. Ugrsteh and Uysnskow both represent some younger Alruthines (but not as young as nameless ones) that could never truly fit in with our society no matter what. Well, maybe Uysnskow could, at least if I had ever allowed my developing love for the character concept grow beyond a single event opponent. It is a bit strange that Ugrsteh was so early considering his power is basically an inversion of the species weakness, but no one ever really attacked Alruthines with noise, except Blajboa on accident :V But the Warehouse was the hook for the plot, revealing that for some reason some people wanted Blajboa did, and those people were actually not people at all!

Conspiracy theory disguise, as mentioned before, was to acknowledge the synchronicity with the Reptilian Conspiracy of real life and to keep anyone from guessing quite what was going to happen. I've always made a point of underplaying my character's role as protagonists in my own plots, and when Conspiracy Guy tackled Blajboa off into a new room to seemingly incapacitate her, I was playing off that assumption from people on how I do things. Chao even praised my method for removing her from the situation, unaware of what was coming up later in the battle.

Despite being short-lived, I feel I got across a lot of what I wanted to with this first event. Uysnskow explained her bone obsession well and Ugrsteh's grumpiness was conveyed as well, only Moyusfuy seems underdeveloped although we did see more of his story from the investigation afterward, revealing how he probably wants to fit in with humans the most of any Alruthine and hence was willing to do whatever Mark told him to do. I did not expect Moyusfuy to survive and was a bit surprised when he was revived, because besides maybe Ugrsteh, he'd be the least willing to tell anything about the plans of the group. At the same time, I felt the obligation to acknowledge he's not dead on occasion, but since Cornwind never really had anything come of it, I didn't either.  Moyusfuy simply had no in character reason to ever try and be cooperative.

I am sorely tempted to bring back Uysnskow in some way, but she probably works best as a one-off. She could certainly have a story to tell, but I don't want to cheapen or ruin the character with an unsuccessful revival.

Moyusfuy wanting to kill Blajboa despite being her direct kin was meant to show that basically anything goes with Alruthine on Alruthine violence, something that almost came up in the finale, but didn't! Bjab and Dajo never fought their daughter, and I actually kept Boa a bit busy so she couldn't immediately say DAT'S MY PA AND MA.

I also feel like this Investigation was probably one of the better planned ones, as it was the first and I wanted to lay down enough hints to get things started, although at the same time not give it away. That would become a common issue as I wanted people to figure out the motivations of the Alruthines before the end of the plot, which thankfully Gooper picked up on and stated in character as Sumireko I believe.

Also, a huge thanks for sending Sumireko throughout the plot, Blajboa didn't get to connect with many characters since opportunities like Amity fell right off the map. Boa thankfully got a bit of a character arc through Spy's plot so she wasn't solely the character connecting us to this plot. Things were a bit awkward when Raezin and Ugrsteh almost led to the complete collapse of the place we'd need to do our investigation in, but as event guider I easily just said things somehow survived all that. I was a bit wary with introducing the investigations after plot as it might not get attention or people just may not like it, but it seems to have worked out well enough, and although the limitations weren't as meaningful as I thought they'd be... that's probably for the best!

Really though, there's not too much to say about this trio that hasn't been said in RP. I take a basic idea and build off of it, and unlike Deck members the past of Alruthines are not quite as complex as they all have some similar origins.  Moyusfuy was fitting in fine and was content with life until technology broke his skinsuit and he lost his human life. Ugrsteh and Uysnskow had personalities that clashed with trying to fit in, leading to Ugrsteh's anger and Uysnskow's craziness over bones giving them away no matter what the other Alruthines tried to help them fit in. Mark just had a few Alruthines he considered expendable to try and clean up what seemed like a rogue betrayer to the race, and they all leaped on it because they had no other way to be useful as they are.

I guess I can say that Uysnskow was meant to emphasize how hard it is for Alruthines to hold their bodies together, as they must constantly think so hard about every action they make and its overwhelming. Uysnskow just wanted to stay in one piece and be able to enjoy life, and bones were what held together other organisms, so she became obsessed with trying to stabilize her life by stabilizing her body. When a single sound can cause your body to fall to pieces, life kinda sucks.

I suppose before we move on I can say why events were placed the way they were. Warehouse was of course the introduction, were the plot was more "Kill Blajboa" and only after the fact would we learn they were part of something larger. The Shipyard would help focus us in on that second aspect and reveal that Shens were being targeted, and if Kobbers had decided "maybe we should ask the Professors about that" they'd be nowhere in sight unless you knocked on Hector Labs's door, wherein you'd discover that they were being held hostage as the Alruthines were trying to stem the tide of the latest popular piece of tech that caused their disguises to break. Next we had the Casino, which was originally a separate event from the confrontation with Mark, but rolled together, as Jisadjok was meant to give us the information to lead us to Mark for a confrontation. And finally, we would have the underground bunker, where we'd have our last fight, learn how the Alruthines fit into human society and how they made skinsuits and the like, and have a few twists before we reached the end.

Now then, we move to the sea!

JIRUNBUF, AKLJADLK, AND THE SAND GUNNERS

As said earlier, the Sand Gunners come from a picture I found but had no character for. The fact that there were two of them was meant to make them taking down ships more believable, although they aren't meant to look exactly alike, as that'd make little sense biologically. They were sort of wrapped up as afterthoughts, as they were there for little more than to be the muscle that made ship-taking possible. They are young Alruthine as mentioned, and were both taken care of with little fanfare as the focus was the two who commanded them.

Somehow, I feel like I knew there would be a banjo gator out there before I found the picture I would use for Jirunbuf, whereas Akljadlk's picture was more of a cool water warrior who didn't really influence her personality so much as her effectiveness in battle. For a while I think these three pictures had a hard time being placed as the boat event was planned oddly for quite a while, and the Sand Gunners almost fought on sand, and I think Jirunbuf was almost fought in the Bayou. I forgot to mention too that the little titles I gave each Alruthine was really to just make them easy to remember if you didn't want to learn their actual names and to clue you in to one aspect of their character.

Jirunbuf was certainly the fan favorite of the Alruthines we'd face, and I don't blame them. Banjo Gator almost didn't even have the shotgun side to his weapon, but that seemed to make little sense, as how would he fight with music alone? Another thing I've forgot to mention until now is mind locations, which was meant to make killing Alruthines a more interesting process as people had to try and guess where to attack to kill them, and most of the time it aligned with their most cherished trait. Uysnskow's was in where her skull should be because of how much she envied bones, Ugrsteh his throat because of how he produced his signature Low Rumble, Moyusfuy where his heart might be as he wanted to be like a human so badly, Akljadlk placed hers in the tip of her tendril as she is tactical and wanted her mind and breathing portion as far from her active body as possible to avoid trouble, Jirunbuf's mind was in his playing hand as he is one of few Alruthines to master finger dexterity to do something as complex as playing an instrument, Baofbawwig kept his mind behind his pride-and-joy steampunk armor where it was thickest: his gut, Gewjogfka kept his behind his eye as he was so focused on vision and absorbing data while most Alruthine can barely read or can't really see text, Jisadjok keeps his mind in his teeth behind his sly and cunning smile, while Vehvhetmx kept his on the tip of his tail, a place no one would expect it to be while he was Mark Cuban and had no visible tail, Bjab's intellectual nature led him to storing his mind in his forehead where a human's frontal lobe resides, and Dajo kept hers in her snout so its close to where she'd give both affection (Alruthines show affection by pressing heads together, or placing where their minds are together in their normal long form) and punishment (her teeth). Blajboa kept hers above the base of her tail to try and be clever but was also meant to represent her looking back on the life she left in Vegas that she was returning to.

I should also mention that the theme that creatures can change their shape easily can't change their mindsets or ideology easily was a small thematic thing that was not meant to be overt but also I was hoping someone would at least quip about Alruthine stubbornness in such a fluid creature :P

Anyway, back to this event! Jirunbuf and Akljadlk were also supposed to show the complexity of the characters in the plot, with neither really wanting to do what they were doing but hoping it would help their race survive. These two both survived in the end, but despite some people being sad their opponents were really nice creatures in bad situations, it was meant to say "no, you aren't going to be killing obvious bad guys here. It is a species fighting for survival, just doing it the wrong way. Some will have to do, others don't need to. You'll have to make that choice." Bleak sounding, huh?

This plot event also introduced the never-really-used mud that was meant to counter sonic attacks so that we couldn't just steamroll every plot event in Alruthine plot. Sound would've still screwed them up of course, but I didn't want it to be instant takedown like it was on Blajboa when ever she went on plots.

Jirunbuf may still show up somewhere down the line as a cameo character of the like, but Akljadlk I felt like did not ever really show her colors. Akljadlk, along with the least human name, was also in a tight bind. She was an excellent and intelligent warrior, but she had a peaceful and thoughtful nature. She wanted to just relax and enjoy the water, as it felt so much more free and alive to her than living in the dirt or on the surface, hence why she hasn't even made human clothes on her humanoid form. At times you might be more likely to find her a clump of tendrils in the water than any other form, and the form she used to break into boats secretly from below was probably her most comfortable shape. She was smart and fierce... something that can't be conveyed well when the entire battle with her was underwater and she had no way to vocalize in her tendril form. She'd break into boats subtly and try not to really sink them, destroying what needed to be destroyed from the cargo while Jirunbuf and the gunners held the crew at bay. She's very much the extreme introvert to Jirunbuf's extreme outwardness. They only pair together well because they both respect that side of the other and can have actual conversations, mostly since Jirunbuf likes to figure things out and Akljadlk likes to share what she knows. Akljadlk's name was probably first on the chopping block if anyone had put in a better keyboard mash.

One thing about the Boat investigation I don't think anyone picked up on was how the cargo was being diverted to the Gulf of Mexico. It was meant to seem like someone was taking it across the country to the other ocean, but it was actually a hint at Mark being Mark Cuban, as he normally hangs out in Dallas, TX. Not a clue meant to actually help you figure out who he is yet, but a clue nonetheless!

And now we move on to...

BAOFBAWWIG AND GEWJOGFKA

 What lovely names these two have. Baofbawwig's picture I feel like was one of the first to be found and thus his personality is heavily based on his steampunk. Naturally, as it was time to pair up some characters in their plot events, I stuck him with his opposite: someone who embraces modern technology. I think their little exchange in the blogpost about their technologies is what inspired me to do that as it was in my head and the lines wouldn't get out except if I typed them up. I already said how Gewjogfka being Francis from Super Paper Mario was more of the idea behind the character somehow fitting him, but I also tried to find a picture of Francis that wouldn't evoke the character Francis. This image is much more subdued and most importantly isn't blocky and paper mario style. It even makes sense in canon that a nerdy Alruthine might be willing to basically cosplay as a character at all times, especially since he could then go out to nerdy places or conventions "in costume" and not arouse suspicion. Although he still mostly stayed inside because he's a tech nerd :V

These two were always meant to be a bit atypical, as other Alruthine rely mostly on crude weapons or their bodies for attack. Them being the ones for Hector Labs was almost a shoo-in, and I already explained a lot of the plot stuff for that event in Hector and Vector's section, so I'll try not to reiterate it here. I flipflopped on how well they would have treated Hector and Vector and decided that basically they were hostages that neither Alruthine knew enough about humans to properly take care of. They wanted information and had the time to wait it out (or so they thought), so it didn't really click how much their hostages were suffering from poor food and hygiene. I also had to have Baofbawwig shooting at Lying Cat even though its a cat because A: bringing something that shouldn't die on a deadly plot shouldn't exempt you from such things, and B: the Alruthines also don't have the same moral hangings about killing cats humans do. Lying Cat was interfering and Baofbawwig had no reason not to try and kill it. Other times though I do roll with things people are trying even when people misread my posts, like when Tenshi and Viola weren't tied together in the same skull bolo or later when the rules to Jisadjok's game were misinterpreted a bit. Probably for the best in the case of those rules :V

Again I feel these two were pretty straight forward and most of their story was told in RP or blogposts. Baofbawwig got the honor of being the first real Alruthine we met in the Good Doctor blogpost, as his weapon made him a good candidate for not revealing too much about the species yet, although both Dajo and Bjab were given cover names so they could be there too. I wanted people to hazily remember the blogposts rather than have them clear in their mind so that Alruthine giveaways (especially the accents, Blajboa never uses the "th to d" in her blogpost where she met Anthony for example) weren't clear until well beyond the point they were meant to be connected back. Also, if you are wondering, Blajboa herself likely won't get a subcategory in this blogpost, as information about her seems to be coming up sporadically or near the start where the plot conception was detailed.

Moving on...

JISADJOK, VAHVHETMX, THE GIRLS, AND THE BODYGUARD

This event got changed more than any other in the plot, and that includes the final event that had a huge plot-changing twist changed. I already mentioned how Jisadjok came before his character art was salvaged from my rejected characters blogpost, but Vahvhetmx was almost an entirely different character because of his image! The top hat and cane really can't be taken seriously, and we barely see this form in RP at all since he spends most his time either as Mark Cuban or the cut up version of himself that escapes. Originally, Vahvhetmx would have explained that he liked the look but knew it was tacky, so he could only take it on when he was being an Alruthine rather than a human. That was changed and his look barely acknowledged at all! The Girls are both Broodmothers, so they had to be big and intimidating like Dajo, as they are super large and are not hollow unlike their brood. Originally both were going to look like the first image shown here, but the mayan alligator thing was added when I could find no other place for it. If you couldn't tell, this event was a bit of a dumping ground for the unused Alruthine art. The Brute was meant to be part of Jisadjok's game and would have fought us normally if we chose the fight route instead of the game, although the Girls are implied to be incredibly tough and it would be a miracle if we made it through them without a few deaths on our side. They are his bouncers for a reason and have tons of body to spare, fighting almost purely on the offensive. They were made that way mostly to try and force people to play along with the game... but not the game we ended up playing. The Bodyguard got almost no attention during the plot event, as this plot was originally two events, as previously alluded to!

Initially, Gambling for Info and Confronting the Businesslizard, as they were called, were two separate events. Jisadjok would be willing to sell out his species as long as the Kobbers played along with him... in a game of Russian Roulette. He'd have a pistol, and a Kobber could ask a question he'd answer completely honestly as long as they put the barrel to their head and pulled the trigger. Only one bullet was in the gun, and with each chamber click the tractor would go from 1 out of 6 to 1 out of 5. He'd even hold the gun to his head and fire if the Kobbers said he wouldn't do it himself, which even if it fired it wouldn't kill him since he'd shoot his head off but not shoot his mind. I figured Sine might play along but most Kobbers probably wouldn't, so I changed the event to something less dramatic. The Girls were there mostly to try and force you to play the chance game with your character's life on the line as they'd probably kill you regardless... or even just go on a rampage and kill innocent bystanders if you said no as a way of forcing you to do so for the sake of others. It was really manipulative and that was a bit of the point, but Jisadjok was softened and the event changed to be less mean.

Designing Jisadjok's game was hard and ultimately it didn't seem as wacky as expected as everyone played the encumbrances and limitations completely straight. I tried to avoid copying something like Oogie Boogie's roulette from Nightmare Before Christmas and Kingdom Hearts, although there is certainly some of that there just because I used a roulette in the end. Coming up with all the difference hindrances was hard and I didn't really crack down on completing it until the night of the event, and even then most didn't get used. Monkey on the Back was one of the first thought up though as it seemed more interesting than a typical trap, and I tried to keep them from being dangerous or deadly as best I could while still being setbacks. I wanted the Brute game to be a bit less straightforward, but then it might be too hard to solve. If anything, this whole thing was me trying again to do a bit of an obstacle course for Kobbers instead of just another straight up fight event, and it seems that just like in Deckplot I struggle to make them work very well. Might just throw in the towel there and try different ways of mixing things up in the future.

Either way, the event was going to be short and be setup for the next event. Instead, it got combined with the confrontation with Vahvhetmx in his office, which was originally a full on fight with him and his bodyguard. Before we continue though, the Silver Dollar casino was referenced earlier in the year as Broderick buzzed outside it, refused entry as he wanted the owner's hat, which we now know is because that hat is actually part of Jisadjok's body. Also, the Silver Dollar casino will be around next year, as Chao asked if Jisadjok would return and it gave me a few ideas I'll be using involving the casino and its owner...

Jisadjok, of course, is meant to represent the obvious question: why don't you just walk around in the open as yourselves? Jisadjok found "success" in the human world by exploiting his subterranean nature, but people still dislike him and speak ill of his species (which they assume is just a lizard man), but he's so rich they'll shut up when he's around to hear them... or at least when they think he can't hear them. Jisadjok surrounded himself with the two Broodmothers to try and prop up his failing ego with something that would be a status symbol to his race but is severely limiting the reproduction and survival of his race. The Brute may or may not be one of the Girls' son though, although they certainly won't miss him too much after Belinda abducted him, as they hadn't even named it yet. Jisadjok is the Alruthine who lived amongst humans, and even though he's rather friendly sometimes, he doesn't particularly feel he belongs either on the surface or with his race anymore. If not for his riches he'd probably have been killed long ago.

Now, we move on to Vahvhetmx, or as you probably know him best, Mark Cuban. I wanted a sort of soft reveal before we got the big Bill Clinton one that a real person of note was an Alruthine. I didn't want it to be someone who might be used by someone else in RP, so big names like Bill Gates were off the table, but I still wanted them rich, successful, and recognizable enough for it to be a shock and to make sense with how the Alruthines were being funded and hid well in our society. I almost made Vahvhetmx Elon Musk based solely on a negative portrayal of the billionaire on Black Dynamite, but Musk is actually pretty cool in heralding in the next wave of technology... which wouldn't make much sense for an Alruthine to do to be honest. Mark Cuban was selected when I remembered my roommate's disdain for him when we were talking about the show Shark Tank one day. Mark Cuban is certainly rough around the edges enough that I didn't think anyone would really object to him being made a villain, let alone the main one of Alruthine plot. From there I did some research on the guy, but still didn't expect people to point out his charitable acts and all, which almost neutered his role as prime antagonist. Most Alruthine, as mentioned though, are just unreasonable creatures in a tight spot, and while Vahvhetmx would certainly give to charity, the pressure of keeping the race going in human society on his own broke him and led him down his darker path. In one of the few post-event posts I made, we see people recognizing Mark Cuban as he investigates the attacked Warehouse. I remember I was slightly worried something would be said about the Warehouse district that made it unusable in my plot during the Coalition of Malice finale, and I tried to imply the Alruthine funding was a bit excessive when the Conspiracy Nut took us to the Warehouse in a posh car. Still, if someone had found it was Mark Cuban before the reveal, it would have been pretty crazy.

Anyway, Vahvhetmx and his bodyguard would have been our sole opponents in a separate event initially, and he might have had an extra bodyguard as well for more muscle. No combat powers were really figured out except the Bodyguard might have poison weapons, as Vahvhetmx's plan with smoking out the Kobbers with toxic gas was the big lead-in to fighting him always, as the otherwise human people have their tails shoot out and grab some oxygen from a safe room as they try to make everyone suffocate. I had wanted Courier 6 to come along on the event as I had the idea of Mark Cuban offering him some money to help kill the Kobbers as the poison went on. The Courier would be immune and if he agreed he'd be the way of sweeping up anyone else immune. Just thought it'd be a neat way of doing something on the plot. Also: We were originally meant to kill Vahvhetmx here! See, he wasn't originally the final boss of this plot. That honor went to...

BJAB, DAJO, DOC GERBIL, AND THE SKIN MAN

Well, not all four of them, but yes, initially, Blajboa's parents, Bjab and Dajo, would have been behind it all! They were the top of the foodchain, rather than the trapped parents used as emotional blackmail to all other Alruthines to listen to Vahvhetmx finally instead of the family leaders. The idea would end up discarded as too cliche and I preferred the angle I came up with better, and it allowed Blajboa to have her happy ending, her species to have a way to continue to exist, and so many other better outcomes, but I just REALLY wanted Bill Clinton to be the final boss of this plot. We still got to fight him, but he wasn't much of a threat as other narrative factors limited how he could fight.

Since Bjab and Dajo's battle with the Kobbers would be a bit of a smokescreen, early on the idea of fighting Doc Gerbil and Skin Man was combined with the finale. I considered splitting it away a few times until I decided the parents weren't the bad guys and Vahvhetmx could easily stand and fight at the end too, even in his reduced state. The underground bunker was chosen as they needed somewhere that couldn't just be found easily or traced back too without the gambling for information event, but at the same time it would be super accessible for Alruthines because of where it was. Although Bjab and Dajo needed a special chamber so they couldn't escape so easily. Blajboa can burrow through really tough stuff, but no Alruthine can just burrow through layers upon layers of solid metal, not even a broodmother. Bjab couldn't anyway, as both he and Vahvhetmx had the procedure that made their bodies incapable of returning to their natural Alruthine form easily, as they are basically stitched and fused together like the Skin Man.

Bjab and Dajo's stories were also kind of touched on earlier, so I don't think I need to go in depth here. With a blogpost this long I fear I've repeated myself too many times already. Vahvhetmx's final stand was meant to be pathetic though. I thought the main villain being reduced to barely nothing for his final stand made a nice inversion of the mega stakes and superpowers of the Deckplot finale. Alruthine plot was also much smaller in scope, so the main muscle for this final battle would be the Skin Man and Dajo, with Dajo disengaging the moment we figure out she's just a scared and cornered creature lashing out at someone entering what was basically a torture/sense-deprivation chamber.

So, Doc Gerbil's turn to evil... shouldn't have been unexpected really. In ZFRP we have many villains who turn good and just stay good, but for a while after he failed as a character I wanted him to turn back to evil. The Good Doctor blogpost was to facilitate and explain that turn away from trying to be good, although I feel bad making M Sheep think the Good Doctor character was going to be far more interesting than Doc Gerbil was :V Doc Gerbil is me reading RP in much the same way as I did for Faith, although unlike with Faith, there were many times Doc Gerbil, the only qualified surgeon on the ZFS, was turned away from doing surgeries just to do pre-planned events or because they didn't want this or that cluttering things. So, when in canon characters must be specifically refusing to have Doc Gerbil work on them, you got to come up with a few ideas to explain it, hence him thinking of the mistrust from everyone else. Many things he said in his event were me playing that up with a dash of evil so that nobody would care about killing him, and although people tried to save him, I don't really think he could've been saved at all. He certainly felt bad about some things he did, but he'd fall back into this way no matter what.

I suppose I might as well explain his inception, as I noticed the ZFS in 2013 had no real doctors who could perform surgery, a fact ignored next year when we had multiple surgeries done by characters who were not doctors or seemed only general doctors before then. I considered using Doctor Lollipop from this video just because it was a funny idea and had some relationship with the IPU, but Edyth needed a surgeon, and I instead pulled from something else in my past. In one of my classes, one where you were always in a group with some other folks and rotated what you'd be working on, we three dudes all got into the habit of singing It's Doc Gerbil's World, so when we were tasked with making a trebuchet, I thought it cute to print out a picture of Doc Gerbil and put it on our creation. The trebuchet was supposed to launch a grape over a line, and it was too loaded down to do so, so the picture got ripped off as I tried to make it work, but we only managed to get the grape across the line when the trebuchet became so light that launching it instead caused it to flip its entire body over the line while still holding the grape.... which technically counted according to our student judges! Certainly the reason I pulled on him was the emotionaly attachment I got from that class and story. I didn't want to make Doc Gerbil too good and nice, but in the end I didn't make him much of nothing, as every opportunity for him to do anything was rejected or never came together (Doctor meeting anyone?).

So, the idea to turn him full evil came to be as it filled the niche of explaining the skinsuits. However, we may see Doc Gerbil may have had more of a history then we thought as we move forward in ZFRP. He had a long history before he got arrested and forced to serve on the ZFS after all...

As for Skin Man (who was surprisingly saved instead of killed, although he was made about as smart as livestock so no one felt too bad about his condition or possible death), he was meant to explain some things like how the flesh felt like it was alive and as a way of not having it be a skin harvesting thing. Sure, some flesh did come from the freshly dead, but it was grafted onto the Skin Man to keep growing while its bones were given to Uysnskow to appease her. Like I said, no one was ever killed explicitly for their flesh, although some people Ugrsteh killed just being Ugrsteh were used for this purpose. It was difficult finding a good picture for Skin Man, as Flesh Golem pictures are usually too gross or didn't fit the image well enough. Even the picture I used is me settling, as Skin Man was meant to have flaps of skin waving off is body like frayed cloaks. Skin Man was the least disturbing while still looking somewhat like a fleshy monster that can be sheered like a sheep. Despite really just being a bash-you-up kind of enemy, the setting and Doc Gerbil made it more than just a beat-em-up fight.

So after all that, we killed bad guys, saved some good guys (and bad guys!) and now the Alruthine race can rebuild. It is a slow process though, a lot of their biology is meant to emphasize how hard it would be to just enter human society anywhere besides the epicenter of weirdness that is Kobberland. After all, humans can't even treat each other right, why would they treat another intelligent species any better? Haven was a good last minute save for the Alruthines to go to rebuild, while Blajboa heads off with Moyusfuy to try and spread understanding, or at least sow the seeds of it. Much like how Bjab and Dajo will probably take 300 years to rebuild their race to an acceptable size that they can come back to Earth, that's probably how long it will take for people to accept them :V I didn't want Alruthines leaving Earth to be a perfect solution of course. Asking someone to just leave the place they've technically lived on longer than most any other creature is not a viable solution nor a fair one, but I think the surviving Alruthines mostly got off well enough considering their species population was at least cut in half.

CONCLUSION

So that was Alruthineplot, and many more things besides! What a huge honking blogpost, bigger than Deckplot's too I'm sure, mostly because so many more things needed explaining or mention! Inventing your own species can be fun, but it's hard to know how much anyone else is understanding it, and we also took a look back at many characters along the way who were tied, sometimes only lightly, to the plot. I guess... after all this, I do have something to say about a certain someone.

Blajboa. Before we say goodbye, a few more things about her. Her image is from a great Flash video series called No Evil, of a character named Calamity. If you google "No Evil Calamity" you can see a few images of her, and you'll also notice they all carry a lot of attitude or a tuning fork weapon. I ended up taking a still of a video where she read a paper (which, incidentally, would be hard for Blajboa to do!) as it felt the easiest to build my own personality off of... although originally I had planned to RP Calamity herself! She has a very fun personality in No Evil and she even has a voice that would be pretty perfect for Boa. This picture was in my recycle bin before I pulled it out and used it for Blajboa. The tuning fork weapon (which in No Evil can be used to guide water around) I mentioned was almost used to give Boa more interesting powers, but I decided to try the stretching angle solely since we really didn't have a character with that ability in ZFRP yet. Besides, we already had one Alruthine using sound as a weapon despite it being their weakness :V

I already said a few things about her character arc of learning her own strength through Raspberryplot, although her distaste for needlessly excessive violence never came up because whenever it could have schedules didn't line up or there was no chance to do it. It was never quite far as Everett's stance on death and all, but Blajboa instead thought death was justified sometimes, but maiming or disabling were terrible things to do.

And I believe... that's it. If there is anything more to say, it might be best not said, as this is already super long and only a few troopers will make it to the end. Still, if you have questions, feel free to ask, and I'll answer as best I can! My apologies for any repeated information, as I wrote this over the course of a week rather than all at once.

And see you all next year, as I try to do something a bit different with my plots...