Welcome to
Counterweight City Archives!
Please feel free to grab some tea and stay a while. If you're still not sure how to navigate this portion of the site, you opened the right book. All you have to do is click on the pages to flip them, and click anywhere else to put down what you're reading.

Expect a good variety of books here.. some share cool things I find like games, music etc. while others are just random thoughts I wanna put to (virtual) paper. Either way, be sure to check back because I will be adding more over time!
Flip me!
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That's about it!
Enjoy your stay, and thank you for reading =^^
OSAMU SATO and Tong-Nou
Many people know of Osamu Sato from LSD Dream Emulator, but he actually developed a much cooler series of games a few years earlier. These games are
called "The Eastern Mind" and "Chu-Teng". Similar to LSD, its a total psychedelic trip, with visuals that dance on the
line between fun,
freaky, and even cute at times, in its own way. The main mechanic of the game is that you must die and reincarnate to progress.
The reincarnation
sequences are interesting because it's unclear if you're "playing as" someone or just looking at stuff
that happens on screen. For example, who chooses your body parts before reincarnation? It can't be "you" because you technically don't exist yet.


Sometimes we think everything ends after death but this game reminds me the world goes on, man. Make sure to love yourself. Give these games a shot, maybe you'll get lucky and have a breakthrough.
SPOOKY'S JUMPSCARE MANSION
I love this game, like so much. It's technically a fake-out horror, but it's more goofy than scary and it works to it's benefit. Basically you have to go
through 1000 floors of this backrooms-esque mansion for real no reason other than that's the objective of the game.
Occasionally, you'll
come across a cool
setpiece based on some classic horror trope, followed by an obligatory trip down a dingy elevator.
Overall, the game is
endearingly lolrandom and I think that helps
create its unique vibe. Probably the coolest thing about Spooky's though, is the sense of "being really in the weeds" that I've yet to see another game truly recreate. For example, when you get to about room 500, the air kinda becomes foggier and the music gets oddly relaxing.
(I just realized "in the weeds" is a little on the nose lol) Anyway, sure there's some creepy pngs that chase you but to me, the game's more about walkin' and vibin'



RPG BATTLE THEMES
Until recently, I was super fixated on generic encounter themes in RPG's, like the Final Fantasy "Battle 1" tracks, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire, that sort of
thing. I tried really hard to compose my own (probably once a week for 2+ years) but wasn't very happy with any of them.
It's tough because
you want epic but not
*too* epic, catchy but not annoying, and most importantly.. the anime melodrama. the valiant swoops of swords and cute girls with magic powers, I could go on.
I'm kind of a sucker
for romantic power metal-type vibes, and one composer who does it best is Motoi Sakuraba. Most of his
stuff has this shreddy flamenco energy, which nails the vibe for me. He can make it catchy too for the random encounter theme, such as in Golden Sun, Valkyrie Profile, Tales Series, etc.
Hopefully I can make my own one day, but for now I'm happy to just enjoy the epic works of the master..
Personality
Tests/Quizzes
I'm super indecisive when it comes to these, but here's my best guess for a few of my favorite ones.
First off we have MBTI and I'm honestly not sure. Been back and forth between INFP, ISFJ, INFJ and INTP mainly, but also ISFP and ENFP lol. Definitely not a TJ, but I respect them.
Next we got Pokemon types. Technically not a real one but fun to think about. I'm 100% mono bug! I really love eating fruit, I go on the webs a lot, have a hard shell but am soft, kinda twitchy etc. etc.
Next, Homestuck classpects. I really hope I would *not* be prince of light, but I can kinda see it. I like voidy stuff like cosmic horror, etc.
however I get
a visceral reaction to anything that seems douchey or self indulgent, including myself at times.. which just seems very prince of light.
Hogwarts house, I'll go Gryffindor because I aspire to become braver and I want my money's worth out of my wizard education.
Anyway, there's a crap ton of other tests like these out there.. I love reccomendations!
POKEMON.. -_-
I have played the living crap out Pokemon, and specifically BW2. Counting the amazing drayano romhacks I wanna say I've played it like 20+ times? I also have a special connection to BW2 because
I'm technically a Unovan! When I was little I lived in Opelucid (irl it's a lot more like White Ver.), and then moved just outside
Nacrene for my
teenage years.
Marill was my first pokemon and I probably got him in the weird entralink forest thing tbh.
No way in hell I
was beating Opelucid gym so I'd say I didn't
get my first badge till like 13 or so when my family moved to Nacrene. By that point, my dad probably gave me a porygon and klink to raise, so I would have been able to handle it. Then I'd take on a few more gyms and catch a larvesta and bagon along the way for some solid op mons.
And then I moved far away to upstate Unova never to be seen again.. or something like that. Oh yeah and I guess I caught
an impidimp because
he's epic.



A FEW
COOL SCPS
I love a good SCP, and especially ones with very cold, clinical scientific writing. There's also a few goofy ones I really like, such as the fine capitalist enterprise by dado. Dado is a super scuffed drug dealer, who offers among other things the "discreet banana radiation kill u pill"
and the "pill for what make the people old and horny" (both of which pretty much do what they say on the tin). Definitely my fav POI.



I'm also a big fan of some of the in-world cults like Church of the Broken God and Sarkicism, both of which go insanely hard with the eldritch aesthetics. SunnyClockwork makes these sick etching-like artworks, such as the one on the left. Generally
though, my favorite series is still Series I. You got all the classics and the articles are short and very clinical. Truly
a chef's kiss.
GLORIOUS TRAINWRECKS + Anthology of the Killer
Glorious trainwrecks is a super cool site where people can upload short form games. Since the focus is on amateur game dev, a lot of them are
a little rough around the edges, kinda like stuff you'd see on Scratch (if yk, yk). Interestingly, a few legit artists have
stuff on the site,
such as Harmony Zone. For example, check out this cute glimby game they made. (pictured below)
The artist behind
Harmony Zone also made a fascinating series called "Anthology of the Killer", which you should *definitely* play.
It's kind of an episodic format where each game has the protagonist solve a different mystery related to the eponymous killer. Aesthetically, everything in the game is hand drawn in what looks like MS Paint or something, giving it a very unique feeling.
The dialogue is somehow funny, poetic, campy and cryptic all at once. I don't wanna spoil too much though!
CHARACTER
DESIGN: A
Case Study
I wanna be a degenerate over some character designs so here we go, lol. Something that immediately appeals to me is a consistent color palette, and Sarv and Ruv from FNF's Mid-fight Masses mod epitomize this. With the right pose and expression,
colors can give you a great sense of what the character's all about. Ruv's greys instantly give off that apathetic badass vibe, while Sarv's velvets and neons totally drive



home that sexy demon-nun thing she's got goin on. I fuckin love the two of them. Next we got the adorable N from Murder Drones, who's design cranks everything appealing about the default drone design to 100. I think the yellow lights in his hat bring out the cute kirby
eyes in a way quite unlike the other MD characters, and of course in his usual outfit you got the fluffy neck thing you see in all
those Sans AU's :D