Australian games industry future bright despite government funding cuts
Sydney, 15th May 2014: The Federal Government has announced that as part of its savings measures in the 2014 Budget, it will cease the Australian Interactive Games Fund (AIGF) from 1 July 2014, thereby saving AU$10 million. The AIGF was announced in 2012 and was allocated a total of AU$20 million to be spent over three years.
“It’s unfortunate that this funding has been cut, but it won’t have a significant impact on the future of the Australian Games Industry,” said 30-year game industry veteran John De Margheriti.
“The scope of the AIGF was limited; it didn’t support new developers or larger studios working on big projects. Consider that the $20 million spread over three years falls well short of the average development budget for a current generation game of between US$30-100 million. A larger studio would be better off getting access to the 40 percent Producer Offset, currently only available for film production,” says De Margheriti.
Regarded as the father of the Australian Game Industry, De Margheriti has established several game studios, created the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), the leading specialist games educator in Australia, and founded the Game Developer’s Association of Australia.
“These cuts won’t impact on the opportunities available for graduates coming out of AIE. The AIGF was not intended to support new developers without published titles. That’s why we created the Incubator Program which makes a range of funding available to these developers, even up to three years after they’ve graduated,” De Margheriti said.
In 2014, over AU$400,000 of grants and project funding will be awarded to teams in the Incubator. Next week, AIE will be announcing the first recipients of the AU$150,000 Post-Incubator Development Grant for teams that have graduated in 2012 and 2013. AIE’s Incubator Program mentors graduates through the process of creating their own studios and supports them to create new companies, innovative digital content and original IP.
“I’m excited about the future of the games industry in Australia. If we want a bigger slice of the US$70 billion global games industry, there needs to be a range of funding and investment options for developers at all levels. There’s a huge amount of talent and great ideas currently in development that I’m committed to supporting,” stated De Margheriti.
Puzzle platformers are everywhere these days, with indie game developers and the Steam Greenlight programme combining to provide a constant flow. This one is from Danish developers Osoa games, and maintains another trend; mechanics based on the manipulation of time.
Chronology had a bit of a rough ride to publish; the studio where it began life closed at the end of January this year, leaving a small group of developers to finish it off and release it as the first title from Osoa games.
Story
Chronology follows the adventure of the Inventor and Snail as they try and set the world to rights after “The Verve”, one of the Inventor’s projects, has a hand in destroying the world. Waking up with no memory of what has happened, the Inventor comes across a device that allows him to switch between the past and future. He stumbles across Snail, a somewhat irritating engineered mollusc that for some reason has the ability to stop time. The two must combine their abilities to solve puzzles and make their way to the lair of the Inventor’s mentor, the man responsible for manipulating The Verve into a destructive force.
The story is simplistic and of little consequence- which is fine in this sort of thing. What lets Chronology down is it’s lack of charm and humor. The old man and snail partnership is quirky enough to have some potential, but sadly the characters are one dimensional. Snail is at once whiny and endlessly optimistic, the Inventor just grumbles a bit and both end up spouting a lot of generic lines about not running from your past. It’s a real shame that the game stumbles in the personality department, because the gameplay is fairly solid and the puzzles quite enjoyable.
Gameplay
Time is at your mercy in Chronology; Snail can stop time completely and the Inventor can switch between the past and future. Snail can also squidge along vertical surfaces and act as a platform for the Inventor, who can jump and interact with objects. Players can switch between the two at the push of a button.
The combination of mechanics makes for some really interesting and tricky puzzles. The Inventor can water a plant in the past and watch it sprout into a platform in the future, and Snail can freeze obstacles or objects in mid air to allow the Inventor to pass.
There are some inventive puzzles to be found in the latter half of the game, combining all of the abilities to make for a decent level of challenge. If the difficulty and creativity had been on form for all of the game’s run time then Chronology would have been great, but the first few chapters are wasted on simple set ups and the whole thing can be completed in under two hours.
Given the myriad of games in this genre and price range Chronology just can’t compete. It’s mechanics are strong but there isn’t enough content to take on the likes of Constant C, another well designed puzzler that offers a similar length of core game but also adds collectibles and a time attack mode. The levels in Chronology exist solely of the route that gets you to the next level, and there’s nothing to tempt you back for a second go.
Audio & Visuals
Chronology takes its visual inspiration fro the work of Hayao Miyazaki, the master animator behind films such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. The influence is visible in the character design, with the little fez and huge mustache of the Inventor channeling some of the Miyazaki look. Snail doesn’t boast as much detail but makes up for it with a nifty reversing light! The backgrounds flick between the blue sky and industry of the past to the darker, wilder future, where strange bits of sentient plant life seem to have taken over. The cut scenes simplify the details of the backgrounds for a lovely hand drawn feel, and Chronology is certainly distinctive enough in looks to stand out from the pack.
The in game music suits Chronology’s atmosphere, but the only audio elements that stand out are the opening and closing themes. The twinkly start menu music has a catchy piano hook, whilst the end credits song, Crooks and Criminals by Stöj Snak, is a cool track to listen to even if it does seem at odds with the quiet nature of the game. The voice actor for the Inventor lacks warmth but that minor flaw is nothing compared to the irritation that is Snail, even the Inventor doesn’t seem to like he/she/it much.
Overall
Chronology is a sweet little thing that never realises its potential. The Miyazaki influence is evident in the artwork if not the quality of the characters and story, leaving it up to the gameplay to sell the title. The time freeze and time travel mechanics allow for some creative and tricky puzzles, but unfortunately the experience is cut short just as the they begin to pose a challenge. There is no reason to play the game again, and whilst it is a pleasant experience there are a lot of titles out there that provide more bang for your buck.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Icon Home Entertainment will be bringing the disaster epic Pompeii, starring Game of Thrones star Kit Harington, to 3D Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on July 23.
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (the Resident Evil series), Pompeii is set in 79 A.D. and tells the tale of slave-turned-gladiator Milo (Harington), whose quest to save his love Cassia (Emily Browning) from being married off to the ruthless Senator Corvus (Keifer Sutherland) is hastened by the great city’s impending destruction. The infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius is realised with stunning 3D visual effects, and with a cast rounded out by Carrie-Anne Moss, Jared Harris, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Jessica Lucas, Pompeiimay just be the popcorn flick to enjoy at home.
If you’re an avid anime watcher and you’ve been following the latest season of series’ you’ll be aware of one called “Hitsugi No Chaika” which is also known as “Chaika The Coffin Princess“. Well “Hitsugi No Chaika” is only six episodes in at this point in time and we’ve just gotten word from the series’ official website that a second season has just been confirmed to begin airing in October of this year.
The year is 1604. On the continent of Verbist, an age of war lasting for three generations finally ended with the fall of the northern nation, the Gaz Empire. In addition to legitimate knights and soldiers, the militant forces sent to battle included wizards, saboteurs, and mercenaries, totaling 620,000. What’s more, three airborne strongholds and massive numbers of magical weapons plus beast and dragon cavalries were added to the ranks, ending in the annihilation of the Gaz Empire, which had been deemed “the root of all evil.” – Crunchyroll’s Official Synopsis
This is great news for the show and its fans! Ichiro Sasaki – who is actually the author of the original light novel to which the anime is based on- mentioned a while back that the plan for the series was always to have it separated into seasons rather than have it as just one long series. “Crunchyroll” has been streaming the new anime ever since it first aired in Japan and will continue to stream it until it is finished so you can head over there now to check it out (click here).
The world as it is now is already a crazy and scary place for its inhabitants but just try to imagine, try to theorise or speculate about the different turns humanity could take with the introduction of a sub-supernatural, deathly powerful and highly unstable set of abilities obtainable by any and all human beings. Life as we know it would change drastically, would it not? “From The New World” is an anime series based off of an award-winning Japanese novel by the same name written by an author called Yusuke Kishi.
The series looks into a seemingly utopian future filled with flawless rules, teachings, beliefs and people but it’s always good to remember that perfection comes at a high price. The past has been sealed away and nothing but secrets, lies and dangers lurk under the misty veil of a dark shadow. This is “From The New World” and thanks to “Hanabee” I’ve been given the chance to review part one of the series, so follow me as we delve deeper into what looks to be one extremely intellectual piece of speculative fiction.
Story
Saki Watanabe is a young girl living in a time that sits a thousand years ahead of where we are now. The world has changed, developed, evolved and become quite a different place…almost a scary place. Taking place in Japan, “From The New World” follows the lives of Saki and her small group of friends as they grow into a state of dangerous curiosity regarding the world they now live in. The people of this “new world” all have the potential to become great psychics. They’re trained from a young age to harness their neural abilities, schools have changed to focus on the development of psychic powers and, along with that, so have the lives of the people.
Citizens of the “new world” seem to be quite happy with the way they’re “encouraged” to live their lives now, though they exist a thousand years into the future (from where we are now) it looks as though their newly-discovered powers have rendered higher technologies redundant shifting the modern style of living way back to that of the traditional style. After wandering off from a class excursion one day, Saki and her friends come into contact with a demon-like creature, on in which they’ve only heard of in stories and legends but this “thing” is nothing close to being a demon…it’s something very different, something they never expected and something that will change their lives forever.
Now understanding the truth of their existence, the children are thrown into a life of disaster and disarray the likes of which they would have never seen coming. Not knowing anything about this series before it actually showed up on my doorstep to review you can imagine how shocked I was when I began watching it and it proved to be quite a well-written and highly intelligent piece of anime brilliance. While the dialogue didn’t entirely live up to the way the actual story was written I still found the series to be quite intriguing.
Within the span of thirteen episodes (the entirety of the “part one” release) the series managed to change itself in a countless number of positive ways. The thirteen episodes are made up of small but interesting arcs all of which are pivotal points of the series. With each step forward in the storyline came a slight change in vibe that eventually lead to a climactic huge step forward into more strange but wonderful events. There is clearly a great deal of backstory that comes along with the series, it forced me into an speculative state wherein which I set there contemplating the world of the series trying my best to figure out the intricacies of it. Not a lot of series’ can do something like that to me.
Visuals
The one thing that stuck out the most about “From The New World” was the artistic style. The animation was great throughout the whole thirteen episodes obviously dipping in quality here and there but it truly was the artistic style that had me hooked. It is almost like the series has a misty filter over the top of every scene because it has a constant look of whimsicality almost like it came straight out of a storybook. I don’t believe it was simply a “misty filter” that made the series look the way it did. The overall design for the series looked sensitive, tender, even rippable like paper, which worked perfectly to mirror the mental states of the characters and, in fact, the world they lived in.
It may seem as though I’m looking far too deep into this but actually watching the series will prove to you that I’m not simply being far too descriptive. It’s more than that. For the most part the animation quality of the series was impressive with dialogue-only scenes seeing a minor dip in quality. It’s only small and can be overlooked but it’s still quite obvious. There were certain scenes throughout that made quite an impression on me with one of them being a huge change in artistic style going from soft and fluid in motion to being gritty and rough but brilliantly sequenced to make an impact. Unfortunately I was only given this series to review on DVD which I suggest be taken as a positive remark seeing as I would have preferred to have seen it on Blu-Ray so that I could appreciate the visual quality of the series a great deal more. Still though, even on standard DVD this series does make a good impression.
Audio
This is probably the only aspect of the series that I didn’t particularly enjoy. While the music is absolutely brilliant and the soundtrack does a good job at bringing gravitas to certain scenes, it was the voice acting that really brings the series down a few pegs. There is only a few voice actors and actresses that do a great job in “From The New World” while the others only serve to annoy and infuriate. Greg Ayres provides the voice for one of the young men of the main group (Satoru Asahina) and despite the fact that he is an accomplished and talented voice actor plays one of the most infuriating character types of all time; the know-it-all, bratty and overly confident troublemaker.
I’m not entirely sure whether or not the character he played was written with the intention of being annoying but that’s exactly how he came across, luckily for the series it had a few voice actors here and there that provided realistic voices to these characters, most notably Emily Neves who is the voice of the main character Saki. There were clear ups and downs when it come to the voice cast for “From The New World” but, as usual, it was also watchable in the original Japanese dub which features renowned voice actors like Yuki Kaji. The soundtrack was done extremely well and featured several different genres all mixed together to provide the proper energy the series needed to thrive.
Extras
“From The New World” part one came with no noteworthy extras but featured the usual Japanese promotional videos and clean opening/closing sequences.
Overall
Simply put; I had an absolutely wonderful time watching the first part of this series. It was full of substance, it was though provoking, it was interesting and it was brilliantly produced. This is the way anime should be! While the characters come off as annoying and one dimensional you soon see that they actually develop and change which, in turn, inadvertently keeps you watching so you can not only see the evolution of the story but these characters too.
I pray that more intellectual anime series’ like this continue to be developed and published because I really cannot get enough of it. This is the type of anime that gets an audience thinking so be aware of that before jumping into the series. It’s definitely not for those out there that are looking for all out action or full frontal fan service, “From The New World” is for the thinking anime audience so why don’t you think about going to buy it now?
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Phoenix Online Publishing have announced that they will be bringing indie developer The Game Kitchen’s award-winning, Lovecraftian point-and-click horror adventure The Last Door to major online retailers, such as Steam and GOG, in a special Collector’s Edition that will include all four chapters of the series with entirely new puzzles, scenes and stories, unlockable bonuses, enhanced graphics and remastered sound.
Out for PC, Mac and Linux on May 20th, The Last Door: Collector’s Edition invites players to “journey alone into the dark to stop an ancient evil from stirring in the shadows of Victorian England”. Through our own reviews of the first three chapters, we’ve noted The Last Door‘s excellently crafted atmosphere, creepy story and fantastic score.
Mauricio Garcia, Project Manager, said about the collaboration with Phoenix Online;
The Last Door Collector’s Edition represents a great milestone in the trajectory of the project since it represents the fruit of more than a year of hard work and efforts. We feel ourselves really lucky to partner with a publisher like Phoenix Online that seeks to bring indie-developed games that focus on rich storytelling and atmosphere to the worldwide market, and this philosophy perfectly matches the one behind our beloved game.
The Last Door: Collector’s Edition will be priced at just $9.99, and will also be made available for additional platforms such as mobile devices later in the year.
My thoughts of Steam Early Access aside, there is a new game coming to the platform for early buyers, and it happens to be a twin-stick shooter by the name of Tango Fiesta from Spilt Milk Studios and Mastertronic. This little title brands itself as an over-the-top cheesefest, where fun is the name of the game for up to four player co-op.
As you see above, the characters fit the bill of those brands, with a name of John Strong. Just look at that badassary. You would also be right to guess that there are plenty of weapons to collect on this insane journey, and I must say that trailer (down below) is rather inviting, so this one might just be a good investment. Tango Fiesta launches on Steam Early Access and Get Games for PC and Mac on June 4th (buy here), where early buyers can provide feedback for future updates.
There must something so thrilling about works of “high fantasy”. Be it the monstrous presence of powerful magic beings or the intimidating sight of a gargantuan creature, something about this genre has kept it around even to this day and I can’t quite put my finger on it. From books to movies to games, fantasy has done its fair share for each and every medium. The newest fantasy/adventure video game title “Bound By Flame” has just been released and thanks to “Spiders” (the development company not the insects) and “Focus Home Entertainment” I’ve been given the chance to review it. The game, through its trailers, has hyped itself up quite a lot boasting about its brilliant visuals and gameplay style making it out to be one of the best fantasy-type titles of the new generation…well, we’ll soon see about that won’t we?
Story
You are Vulcan, by far the strongest member of a mercenary group called the “Freeborn Blades” (also referred to as the “Pure-Blades” in some cases) and a man/woman who may just be the one destined to save the world from the devastatingly cold winds of the “Ice Lords”…BUT you may also be the one to destroy it. Awkward, right? The land of “Vertiel” has been locked in war with the “Deadwalker” army for far too long so finally a group of powerful mystics called the “Red Scribes” decide that something needs to be done! Hiring the “Freeborn Blades” for protection, the “Red Scribes” journey across the land to an ancient temple wherein which they will summon a mighty force capable of destroying the “Ice Lords” and their seemingly endless army but something goes awry…something always goes awry. A blood red light explodes from the center of the room but eventually settles in the body of you, Vulcan. Feeling something inside, you confront the faction of army attacking the temple and burn them to ashes with a power no human has ever been able to control: Fire.
Soon after that you’re told that a demon has made its home inside of you, lending its powers but also slowly taking over your being. Your quest has changed, now YOU are the fate of the world is in your hands but what if the demon takes hold of you before it you can save it? The story is actually quite interesting though what wrecks it is basically the way it’s written. On paper, “Bound By Flame” seems like one hell of an epic tale…yes, on paper. The game uses as many high fantasy-style cliches as it can which would have been perfectly fine had the writing been a LOT better. It’s a fantastic idea to have fire be the greatest weapon in a world ruled by ice, it’s a fundamental “this beats that” idea that could have been greatly extended upon but instead it was addressed and then nothing else. The characters throughout the game were all very unlikable, even you…Vulcan. There were a lot of dialogue pieces that made little to no sense at all and served to just infuriate me. Though I am an angry young man.
Gameplay
“Bound By Flame” is a video game that plays quite similar to other titles of its type: You’re given missions by NPCs you talk to in safe zones (which are usually camps or villages), you then head to the outer regions of these areas to find certain items, people, monster, etc. Once the mission is done you make your way back to the safe area to complete it and grab your reward. Most of the quests in this game are like this, even the story ones which mostly ask you to seek out certain things or explore certain areas so that your team can continue their journey. Players can chose to ignore side missions if they wish, making the game a great deal shorter than I believe it was intended to be. I quite enjoyed the combat system of “Bound By Flame”.
You can fight in a couple different ways: The first way allows players to wield a two-handed sword while the second way allows you to fight with two daggers, one style being slow but strong and the other being fast but weak. It all depends on the way you prefer to play these types of games. The bad thing, though, is that you tend to just stick with the rogue-like fighting style simply because there’s a “dodge” mechanic that makes it very easy to escape the enemy’s attack. Mixing into those two styles are your demonic abilities. I’ve seen people around the web labeling this the third fighting style but it really isn’t because it can be used alongside one of the other two, making it an extension of a fighting style rather than an entirely separate one. These demonic powers grant you the ability to use fire magic which allows you to do an array of things that you’ll notice quickly decimate the enemy. Things like shooting fire balls and setting your weapons ablaze are staples of this power but there’s much more to it like passive abilities to help you recover health or take hits better.
“Bound By Flame” has some brilliant game mechanics, it honestly does and you have to play it for a fair few hours before you can truly appreciate what exactly it is that is done well. There’s an incredibly deep crafting system throughout the game that has kept me very much interested in the continuation of my playthrough. Obtaining items allows for many things to be done; things like trap bombs, crossbow rounds, health potions, magic potions and so many more things can all be crafted. All these are just throw away items that you anxiously use throughout battle, at least…that’s what I did. What I was more intrigued about is the weapon and armour customization which is done through crafting individual pieces.
Example: A sword is made up of the blade, the guard and the pummel, each of which can be individually crafted and placed on a weapon to give it specific stat boosts making your weapon unique to your character. There’s also a very nice leveling system in the game that awards you points which can be used in a number of ways to upgrade your character. Combat-wise there’s three different skill trees that you can climb; one representing the heavier fighting style, one representing the lighter fighting style and the last representing your demonic powers. I could honestly go on all day about the game mechanics of “Bound By Flame”, it is by far my most favored aspect of the title and even though certain aspects of it were lacking (though only minor) I was able to look past them, instead focusing on the positives of it. Visuals
The game forced me into having a mild form of bipolar disorder; every five or ten minutes my views on the visual caliber changed drastically. While traversing through different environments or in combat, it is clear that this game looks brilliant. The character and enemy models have some well-animated, fluid movements and the application of dynamic lighting/shadowing really made the game actually seem beautiful. The hole-filled shadow cast from a high-rise canopy makes you truly believe you’re trekking through rainforest-type territory and I often sat there in awe, reveling in the beauty of the environment but I was quickly taken away from that with quick cuts to cutscenes that look nothing like the fantastic example of next generation animation I was just a part of. This game somehow featured cutscenes that looked worse than the actual gameplay which is something so strange seeing as video games have always operated in the opposite way.
I found myself wishing for more, let’s say, “gravitas” in action sequences or dialogue-centric cutscenes. Characters didn’t seem to be animated quite as well as you would hope from a game being released on the PlayStation 4. During high-tension scenes, these characters barely moved, barely reacted and barely seemed real at all. “Spiders” clearly didn’t utilize the same kind of technology that a great deal of video game development studios are using now; the lack of facial animation really takes you away from what the characters in the story are actually saying. There was no use of motion capture, there was barely any implementation of cinematic techniques…it was just flat and really, really disappointing. It was nice to see some great design work within the game: The monsters, the weapons, the armour, the environments, they were all so well-designed and, mostly, well-animated…too bad the rest of the visuals couldn’t keep up.
Audio
The soundtrack for “Bound By Flame”, I have to say, was extremely impressive. It wasn’t that each track was brilliantly composed to the best of the musician’s ability, it could have been for all I know but what impressed me the most was just how well it fit in with the vibe of the game. The orchestral, creeping, Gregorian chant-style musical tracks definitely had their place in “Bound By Flame”, they worked well to bring a sense of urgency to every pivotal battle and even to some of the more impressive cutscenes, though they were few and far between. What really ruined the audio aspect of the game, for me, was the lackluster and inconsistent voice actors that were meant to “give life” to these characters.
Robin Atkin Downes lends his voice to the male Vulcan and he is, by far, the greatest voice actor to appear in the game even though his lines are absolutely atrocious. Each and every single character has a different way of speaking and a different accent to go with it, which seems awesome until you actually experience these differences and come to realize; they’re severely out of place. You, Vulcan, have a normal American accent and a seemingly normal way of speaking…for modern times. In fact, Vulcan drops the “F-Bomb” many times during idol conversation, so much so that I’m actually surprised the NPCs didn’t just walk away mid talk.
Most of Vulcan’s dialogue is more suited to a game like “Saints Row” rather than a fantasy title set in a medieval-style world. By an hour into gameplay you’ve already come across at least four weirdly inconsistent accents: You’re American, your Captain is Irish/Scottish, there’s a Witch who is English and a villager who speaks like a stereotypical “redneck”…it’s hard to take a game seriously when developers have just thrown in whatever they can like some sort of mixed bag. The best character voices in the game are the ones that actually belong like the demon living in your head and even that guy can’t get it entirely right!
Overall
I tried so very hard to like this game. I really did. There were times when, though frustrated, I wouldn’t bring myself to put the controller down for too long knowing that as soon as I turned off the game I wouldn’t return to it so I stuck with it for hours on end. There are clear problems with this game and they began before you could even really get into the game; having the choice to choose your character’s name and then having each and every character still call you “Vulcan” is a clear mistake on the developers’ part. Glitches in a lot of cutscenes, difficulty levels fluctuating for no apparent reason, terrible voice acting and a story that seems only half there.
Thankfully the actual game mechanics were done well, I thoroughly enjoyed besting an enemy, especially when I got good enough to run rings around them but, even then, I couldn’t just overlook everything “Bound By Flame” had trouble with. I got the feeling that the game was rushed out of development, I’m not sure why but I can’t help but think of how good this game could have been had the development team taken more time to fully flesh it out. Fans of fantasy games will most likely enjoy “Bound By Flame” if they give it a shot but with games like “Skyrim”, “Dark Souls” and “The Witcher” available…well, this just falls to the wayside
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Three hours. That is how long it took me to make a character in The Sims 3. Yeah, that means the system is deep, but it also meant I dreaded going back t the game due to how picky I was and how long it took to customize.
EA seem to want us to know that they have improved things for The Sims 4, as a new trailer has released showing the new and easy way to style your seem. Dragging, pulling, and a few clicks can get you the look you desire this time around, meaning you just need to think about your clothes and head right into the game. Take a look at the clip below, and expect The Sims 4 to be out later this year on the PC.
After the shenanigans of last episode, Sora and Shiro are ready to get down to business and fight for the most powerful weapon in all of Disboard: knowledge. Having discovered the long closed Elkia Library, the siblings must challenge its owner in order to gain access to the vast knowledge stored within. There’s only one problem with that. The new librarian is a Flugel, a high ranking Exceed race, and they never lose…
…or not
Let’s start with introductions first shall we? Meet Jibril, a Flugel with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Seriously, this girl is crazy for information. It’s to the point that she openly drools over anything she considers interesting. Combined with her self imposed accent, it’s pretty easy to see that her angelic facade is only skin deep. She’s definitely an interesting character though. Throughout the episode she switches back and forth between sweet, innocent knowledge seeker and arrogant, unrelenting competitor. However whilst Sora and Shiro are prodigious at everything they attempt, Jibril still considered herself above them in terms of skill, in terms of race even. But as they say, “Pride comes before a fall.” And boy did she fall. To Jibril’s credit though, she did manages to push Sora and Shiro to the edge, further than any challenger before her. That takes skill. Glad she’s a good guy now.
Though not breaking the Ten Pledges per say, Jibril’s game of choice definitely put the odds in her favour…at least that’s what she thought. Having already revealed that she knows all 700 Exceed languages, it’s no wonder why she chose Shiritori. The rules of the game are simple (if you speak Japanese), one player states a word, the next uses the final kana of said word to begin another, thus forming a word chain. You can see where the language advantage comes in. Oh, but there’s one teeny tiny difference between this game and regular Shiritori. Should whatever you say exist within the dimension created for the game, it will disappear, however should it not, it shall be created. Naturally everything that occurs in the game has no effect on real life, so it’s basically a free pass to go nuts. So of course Sora’s first move is to summon a Hydrogen Bomb. A bold move to say the least. The rules being as they are, this episode basically amounts to one giant gambit pileup. With both sides attempting to cinch victory through wit, each player is inevitably startled and impressed when their opponent fires back…or so we think. With Sora being who he is, we of course learn that the game has been over since the first move. Knowing that he can use Japanese words to play, Sora concocts a plan to best the arrogant Flugel, in what is by far the most epic game to ever be played in any anime in history.
The opening move to end all others…
Beginning with an atomic explosion, the game only gets cooler and more over the top. Which is amazing in itself. The episode itself jumps forward in time a fair amount, showing that the game is far longer than what we see. It’s also partly done for comedic reasons, as a sudden scene transition has the group sitting in front of a Mayan Temple, wearing funny hats and eating dinner. God knows how that all happened. Anyway the most epic moments come when the game barrels towards its conclusion. Ever the chessmaster, Sora begins to utilise Japanese to remove a few key elements from the environment, namely Disboard’s crust and mantle. Thus when he speaks the word Lithosphere…things get chaotic. Realising that Jibril will always have a response, Sora and Shiro opt instead to silence her so that she simply can’t answer back. It’s pretty ingenious and the visuals are tremendous. I mean, the final moments of a word play game take place during the plummet to the exposed core of a planet. Let me run that past you again, they’re falling into a 6000 degree hot ball of molten metal and they keep playing! Talk about commitment. Despite her superior Flugel anatomy and knowledge, Jibril is bested at every turn, never able to steal the victory she desires. She is fighting Blank after all. What began as a relatively harmless game (I can’t believe Hydrogen Bomb was so drastically outclassed), ends with the manipulation and destruction of physics. Sora even banked on Jibril’s lack of atomic theory at one point. Though the grandest of finales was definitely the removal of Coloumb’s Force. Simply put, this caused all atoms to be attracted to each other, converging on one point and resulting in a Hypernova. Not a Supernova, a goddamn Hypernova. There’s certainly no kill like overkill.
There’s no way around it Jibril got played. Despite her self proclaimed intelligence, it would appear that she did not know the most important fact in the world of Disboard: Blank never loses. It kind of serves her right to be honest, after all she did try to employ dramatic irony in her final move. Of course Sora predicted this and kablooey went the universe. You know despite all of his social fears, Sora is insanely good at reading people, even if they’re angels. Though that may have has something to do with how *ahem* familiar he became with Jibril before their match. Sure it wasn’t exactly what Sora was expecting, but Jibiril certainly seemed to enjoy their “study” of each other…like, a lot. Fanservice also comprised a major portion of the Shiritori match but, being as they had removed “private parts” from existence at the time, the results were appropriate for all ages…that’s the excuse the series gave anyway. Though this was of course overshadowed by the freakin’ Hypernova! I cannot stress how awesome that was.
What goes up…
So with another opponent down, Sora and Shiro once again claim their prize: the library…and Jibril. Pledging her allegiance to Sora, she states that she has found one worthy of leading the Flugel, the only one to arise after her original Master’s death. Look’s like Blank is just continuing to move up in the world. Though doubts were raised over their place in said world. Rather than simply being brought to Disboard, Jibril states that they are being held here by a tremendous amount of power. Tet’s power. Who knows what this’ll mean when they inevitably beat him in God Chess. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Also, on a final note, i feel pretty bad for Steph. She didn’t exactly have a pleasant experience this episode. Chased by monsters, stripped of all of her clother and what was that last one? Oh yeah, blown up in the vacuum of space! Don’t worry though, she got better.
