Pikmin 3 - My Thoughts and Ideas For Improving the Sequel

If you’ve ever read my blog, you know I don’t review games. My blog is about dissecting games and trying to analyze specifically what the problems are and how to fix them. Also, I like to give my creative ideas and constructive feedback, in hopes that I can contribute to the conversation for how games can be better.

Thorn Pikmin

This is not a review of Pikmin 3. If it were, I would say how much I loved the use of the tablet for a map, the art and sound design, the music, the characters, the puzzles. I would say how much I think Pink Pikmin were ingenious, especially when used alongside Blue Pikmin. The Bee-Queen boss battle was furiously fun. I absolutely enjoyed my time with Pikmin 3 for Wii U, which is awesome because I got it for free. When I purchased Mario Kart 8, it came with a download for P3, and to be honest, I’ve loved P3 even more than MK8.

But this isn’t a review. I want to talk about the issues I’ve had with the game and the creative ideas I have for (hopefully) the sequel (please, please make one!).

Rock and Purple

Black Pikmin

First, I just want to say this: Rock Pikmin are just a rehashed Purple Pikmin. I feel like Purple Pikmin could have been used to break glass as easily as rock ones. I feel like making a new “weighty” Pikmin showed a lack of creativity. Why do the same idea twice? It would have been just as easy to bring back purple as use rock, since they’re so similar.

Now, I want to say that Winged Pikmin are the BEST. I love them. The new abilities of Yellow Pikmin with that electricity chain thing is AWESOME. Good work! I wish there had been more of this… for example, Red Pikmin could get a fire burning on their leaves if they pass through flame, which would allow them to set fires to piles of brush or monsters. Blue Pikmin could absorb water and shoot it at enemies or move it to make ponds elsewhere… I wanted more of this kind of thing, however Yellow Pikmin were the only one of the old Pikmin to get new abilities. Also, I wish I could have gotten to play with White, Purple, and Bulborb Pikmin just for posterity's sake. Maybe they could have just been a cave-specific thing.

Missed opportunities for Rock Pikmin:

I had a bunch of cool ideas for how Rock Pikmin could have been differentiated from Purple Pikmin, and here they are:

Editing Wind

I have been working really, really hard on my novel.

The past few months have been all about world building. Figuring out how society works in my work. Ironing out ancient history. I challenged myself to name all of the year’s holidays in my world. I listed what musical instruments there are. Who the top famous 5 living and top 5 dead musicians are. I knitted my giant family tree together. For each of the major cities in my world, I created an emblem like the ones showing on this post.

turning of the tide

But that was all the last two months, this month has been about working the prose. I’ve been line editing. Fat cutting. Rewording. Man, it feels good to know how much my book has progressed. I think I’ve been supercharged creatively because I’m about to start a new job. It makes me feel awesome to know that I have my money-needs covered now, and I can start rocking my writing without feeling the need to spend most of my day looking for work.

Then the other day I got feedback, and it gave my already high-paced wind an extra boost. Feedback is a writer’s Christmas. The best thing you can give a writer, truly. Feedback makes you feel like your endeavors aren’t completely lonely ones. It makes you think about your own work in new ways. It’s exciting. Useful beyond measure.

old copy

The one weird thing about feedback with a novel-length work, especially for an insane worker like me, is that you often have created several new drafts before any feedback is returned to you. I really don’t want to annoy my friends by sending them new drafts all the time. I don’t want to be pushy, because reading a draft of a book is a lot harder than reading a final product. Looking through notes on an old draft can really make you embarrassed. So many more mistakes, many ones you’ve already corrected. Plot holes you’ve already filled in. Questions the reader has, already answered in the new draft. The book I have now is so much better than the one I first put an ending to.

That said, feedback is so incredibly invaluable, but I also completely understand that work goes into reading, too. My friends who have sent me feedback are so incredibly kind for doing so. Thank you times a thousand. To my friends who haven’t sent me feedback, no worries, you’re still awesome too (but if anyone happens to want to read my novel, email me to get the latest draft!). Honestly, just to allow me to vent to others about writing is so good for me and helps me in other ways than editing. My friends are awesome.

Looking ahead

I feel like I have about 2-3 more read-throughs before I will claim that it is ready to submit to agents, but I’m so excited. Allow me to daydream a bit: Wouldn’t it be great to get published? Not only that, but to be able to claim that writing is my profession? I would put out a new book every year if I had all the time in the world to write. I know I would, and they’d be awesome books, too. I have so many awesome ideas. The Unravel is just one (which has true series potential).

Now Accepting Applications for Critique Partners (St. Louis-area priority)

OK, just joking about the applications part. There’s no application, but I do really wish I had more writer friends to swap criticism with.

I dream of finding that perfect friend who also takes writing as seriously as I do, and who provides fantastic feedback (and wants feedback in return). So, just for fun, I think I’m going to put this into words. What would my perfect crit partner be like?

Rosy cheeks, no warts. Play games, all sorts.

OK, srsly. A good sense of humor. Someone I can be friends with irl.

The ability to take criticism is fundamental, as is the ability to provide it. If you tear up at the mention of a misplaced comma, then this application is not for you. I have an iron gut for criticism, and I don’t like being buttered up as much as given an honest review. I believe all criticism is useful, no matter how fierce or nerve-touching (although, I don’t consider myself to be a harsh critic, I love it when others are harsh critics to me). Even if I disagree with you, I will still respect your opinion of my work and will consider it genuinely. Often times, it seems like if I let particularly harsh criticism sit with me overnight, I come out seeing it from a different perspective.

That said, it’s also important that crit partners generally enjoy each other’s writing (and are near each other in skill level, so I don’t get jealous if you’re better than me or vice versa). I suppose that would come on a read-for-read basis. If you happen to read this and want to trade examples of writing, email me (oxyborb@gmail.com). We can swap chapter 1s, and then either say “yes” and continue or “No, we’re not a match” with no hard feelings. I generally write fantasy and horror for young adults, and that’s also what I generally read.

My perfect critique partner would be working on a longer, novel-length project. I generally write novels, so I would feel bad asking for advice on something longer if you’ve only given me a piece of flash-fiction.

I would love it if my crit partner lived in the St. Louis-area. I live in Belleville, IL, which is across the river (but I could still drive out to STL). I would prefer someone that I could actually meet and chat with at a café than a faceless person over the Internet.

My perfect crit partner would produce a great deal of content, regularly. I write heaps of stuff, so it’d be nice to find someone who throws just as much stuff back at me. I often feel like I ask too much of people, because nobody else is as crazy about writing as I am. It’d be cool to find someone who shares my compulsion for constantly working on new projects.

Also, my novel, The Unraveler, is a teen fantasy. You can read about it by clicking here, but I'll just say that my style is aiming to be somewhere between Stephen King and JK Rowling, not that I'm comparing myself to them, but that's the kind of feel I am working toward. Something creepy, yet with light-hearted, goofy moments. For teens. I love horror, disturbing, scary moments, but I also love the feeling of exploration you get from first setting foot into Hogwarts. Get it ? The Unraveler aims to be like that, with a touch of Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and a little Pirates of the Caribbean, too. If all those books were blended, it would be The Unraveler.

That’s what I’m looking for. If you seem to fit any of that, you should leave a comment or email me.

Animal Crossing: An In-Depth Wealth of Constructive Criticism and Suggestions After Having Played New Leaf

This is not my first post about Animal Crossing, and it probably won’t be the last. You see, something sparks a fire in me about this game. The premise is so seductive. The idea of a game about collecting EVERYTHING sounds like so much fun. Build a house; live a new life. This intrigues me.

I enjoyed the Gamecube version of Animal Crossing. The DS version, called Wild World, was slightly more fun. The Wii version was so atrocious that I resold it (the only Wii game I ever traded in). Now, we have the 3DS version, called New Leaf.

The one big problem I have had with ALL of these games comes right after paying off my final loan. At that moment, I lose all interest, because I felt like I had nothing to work for. I thought New Leaf would be different, with the new public works projects, but it wasn’t. I think, in the case of this new game, it’s because the only way to make money efficiently is by selling beetles caught at the island. Doing the beetle routine every night gets old after a month. Each public works project was just another estimation of beetles I would have to catch to see an object that is already in all of my friend’s towns anyway. If there were more optimal and varied ways to make money, I might still be playing consistently.

As of this moment, it’s been three days since I’ve last checked in on my town. The only reason I’m considering looking at my town right now is because I’m afraid that all my black roses have wilted. “NOOOOO!” I said. In the middle of writing this paragraph, I checked. Eleven out of fourteen of my black roses are dead. I should have put them in my refrigerator storage unit. Man…