Katawa Shoujo – UPDATE

You may recall a previous post where I was playing “Katawa Shoujo” after watching along with  Metadating, which was one of the original Geek & Sundry shows.

If you don’t remember it, or did not read it, or maybe suffer from long term memory issues due to a alleged incident with a baseball bat (Sorry Dave) then you can remind yourself about it by re-reading the original Katawa Shoujo post

TL;DR

Basically it’s a visual novel style game where your choices and options dictate which of five girls you end up with. And where the game taught me that sometimes the best match for you is not necessarily the first person to catch your eye?

 

katawa-shoujo-characters

The available options.

 

The Replay:

I was still a little bit annoyed about not getting the girl I wanted, So I replayed the game and made different choices with my life to get a different story. And I may have done a little bit of research to make sure I got the outcome I wanted.

It’s not cheating. It’s putting in the effort to get to know the girl?……Oh who am I trying to kid, I cheated at the beginning to make sure Act 2 was on the path I wanted.

Anyway, Play-through #2 got me the Girl I wanted based off first impressions instead of personalities (Take that Game mechanics).

And I am man enough to admit…

Gods the Girl I picked from first impressions was an annoying, annoying thing. By half way through Act #2 I did not just realise how much a mistake this was, but I actually hated the character. I longed for the parts of the narrative she was not in. I missed the girl form Play-through #1. Hell I missed any of the characters that were not the girl I picked.

I have to admit I am impressed, It is really looking like this simple free game knows which type of woman I am better suited to than I do myself.

It is an eye-opener.

Also it’s possible that I have really bad taste in women!

 

You can download the game Legally & For free from :- http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/download.php

Katawa Shoujo

I have been slowly trying to catch up on a backlog of Films, TV Programs & YouTube shows. To demonstrate just how bad the backlog is. I’m currently catching up on Metadating, which was one of the shows on the 1st year of Geek & Sundry back in 2012?. (I know right.) So Metadating did a 2 part show on “Katawa Shoujo

Katawa Shoujo is a bishōjo-style visual novel by Four Leaf Studios that tells a story of a young man and five young women living with varying disabilities. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV-style text box running on the Ren’Py visual novel engine. The game is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND.

They had split it into two 2 hour episodes so that they could show the game and discuss it while playing part of the 1st act, then give everyone a chance to play the game themselves (Its a Free Cross-Platform Game) and then they could play some more and discuss it in the second episode. I started playing while watching the second episode, where I discovered if you really messed up your choices YOU CAN DIE!

Luckily, unlike one of Metadating’s Presenters I survived without dying.

Katawa Shoujo

So the game starts with a quick back-story to explain what is going on and why you are now in a new special school. After this you are introduced to your new school and get to meet each of the main girls. You have to meet them all to make an informed choice right?

katawa-shoujo-characters

The available options.

The Game/Story then progresses with you learning about the school, the people, etc.. Every so often you are given options, and what you pick influences the story, like those old “Make your own Adventure” books.

The Game is in 4 Acts.

  • Act 1: Meet the Girls and get interested in one (If you fail you die)
  • Act 2: Get to know your Chosen Girl and move from friendship onto Romance
  • Act 3: Troubles and if you do not do well, A BAD ENDING
  • Act 4: If you get to Act 4 you get a Good Ending.
  • Also you can die at any time you totally mess up.

Playing Act 1,

I had picked out the girl I wanted and was playing to get her. She was a shy little thing, and at one point I thought I had won. She had stayed behind after class because I was finishing up some homework (I did mention it was set in a school). Her best friend came looking for her, and after a whispered conversation left leaving the girl in the class. She kept looking at me, and seemed to be waiting for me to notice her and talk to her.

Real Life me went “YES. I got the path I wanted, come on notice what’s going on”

Character me did his homework, nodded at the girl and left!

This annoyed me as being male I generally need to be hit with a baseball bat with the words “I like you” written on it to notice these things, and yet character me was more oblivious than real life me. I calmed myself down with a beer, and in spite I refused to share with character me.

It turns out, that making the choices I had, which in turn influenced the personality of the Character I was playing made me better suited for the personality of a different girl, rather the the one I had picked after quick first impressions. And the game had realised this. Who knew that the best match for you is not necessarily the first person to catch your eye?

This was too deep for both real life me and character me, and we had another beer.

Without any Spoilers. Act 2 went along fine, and I started thinking “Humm, OK my character could get along with this girl”. Act 3 was a bit touch and go, and I strongly suspect I almost ended up heading towards the BAD ending where we split up. But my overall brilliance let me slip into Act 4 and the Happy Ending…

Overall the story was interesting, and I have since seen the flowchart of the various ways the story can change based on your choices and am even more impressed with the writing. I am tempted to play the game again, with different answers to see just how much the path/story changes based on a single moments decision. (It’s the Multiverse people!)

You can download the game Legally & For free from :- http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/download.php

MEME: The Jung Explorer Test Revisited

On the 5th December 2006 I sat A Jung Explorer personality test. Probably due to Office Boredom, or some other important reason, I will not go into since I’ve slept since then. many many many times, and I cant actually remember… But that’s a different story.

Anyway. I sat the test and my results were :-

I am: INTJ (Mastermind)

I want to be: INTP (Architect)

I’m attracted to: ENTP (Inventor)

Taking a minute out of my busy day today. (I was woken by a work based phone call at 7am, and been working since then) I decided to revisit that test, 4 years on. My results this time were.

I am: INTP (Architect)

I want to be: INTJ (Mastermind)

I’m attracted to: ENTP (Inventor)

Very similar, In fact the only difference is that I am now what I used to want to be, and I now want to be what I was. “Wow… thats like so deep ……………man” either that or I am right on the borderline between INTP/J that it depends which way the winds blowing as to which one i’ll end up being.

Descriptions for those of you interested in such things.

INTP – “Architect”. Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

INTJ – “Mastermind”. Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

ENTP – “Inventor”. Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population.

There is Just one thing confusing me. According to this test I am attracted to “Inventors” which I am reading as Intelligent women, Geeks if you will. So why is it that 100% of the girls I have dated in my life are airheads ??

Answers on a e-postcard. Best response wins a prize..

The Quest for the Mythological Creature.

From the dawn of time Man has quested to hunt out Mythological Creatures.  How much money and man-hours have been spent investigating loch ness for the monster? How many People have walked the American woods looking for big foot?  Its our natural instinct to try and find the truth in such myths.  So, to do my bit for the advancement of human knowledge, I decided to spend some time this weekend attempting to find out some more information on a “mythological Creature.”

Which Creature are you hunting?” I hear you ask, “Vampires? Werewolves? Big Foot? Teggie?

NOTE: Teggie if you want to know is a sea monster a bit like the Loch Ness monster but from Bala Lake.

Nope. The Mythological Creature I am trying to prove if they exist or not is….. *insert drum roll*…. “Intelligent Women”  Yes, those things we have all heard about, and know a friend of a friend who may have met one once.  Women who are intelligent and witty.

So. How did I do my research? Well I signed up for an online dating website. I will not name which one of the major UK ones I used since they may be a bit upset that i used their site for something other than they had designed it for. I will say its one of those that ask you loads of questions about yourself, and what you like in a partner, so it can match people by personality and likes.  To be fair I set “no preference” to all subjects like distance, if they have kids, religion, race, everything. The only things i stated were important were, Intelligence, Sense of Humor, Personality.

So, I filled in all the details. submitted it, and waited while their servers calculated the details, and searched a database of UK people trying to match anyone based on my requests.  After a while the results came in.

NO MATCHES FOUND

So there you have it, One of the largest online dating sites in the UK (If not the world) with a reputed 60% female membership has 0 women who met the standards set.  So far its not looking good for finding evidence of these creatures.

I will keep you informed of any more evidence found one way or another on this subject.