SticksNTricks' Writing Shticks

Each count of his breath was as painful as the last. With every second, to him, minutes. The corners of his eyes brought dread.  A fading conscious… a fading mind. He had forgotten how long he had been drifting. The ship was wrecked... its crew dead. It was instantaneous if he remembered correctly. They were the lucky ones. He continued his count, taking into regard how little he was taking in oxygen. John lost a quarter of his tank through a breach. A rough patch job earned him about a few hours left of oxygen… provided he rationed it. But those few hours were already long gone.  A fusion of anxiety and fear shortened his lifespan. And in those moments he was close, close to what he believed would be his inevitable fate.  Death did not scare him, however… John was afraid of dying. He was afraid of being alone in his last moments… afraid of dying alone and dying a slow, helpless painful death. Never in his life had he imagined this was how it would end. It was his ...

In this era of gaming, there's been a surplus of one particular genre that's been on the rise since TheChineseRoom's Dear Esther. A narrative driven game that focuses heavily on said narrative... and absolutely nothing else. And many other games that came out have been trying to work exactly as Dear Esther has. And each time, each game provides simplistic 1-4 hours of minuscule game time with pricing way above the necessary limits. 20 dollars, 30 dollars even. Time and energy has been wasted making a game that shouldn't be called as such. And its an insult to both the gaming community and the medium itself to call these genres as such. Now I don't want to hear all this crap about 'its poetic' or 'its art' and 'its different' because these are not good excuses. They are never good excuses. And I honestly am ashamed to call myself a writer in a time where people look upon some of these as narrative 'masterpieces' befitting of literary...

Its hard for me to appreciate Arkane Studio and Bethesda/Zenimax's reboot of a highly underappreciated video game. Coupled with the potential sequel the original had before it was canned in favor of said reboot, it left a bad impression when I saw the initial trailer for it. And many of the underlying problems stems from a very severe case of unoriginality and uncreativity the game had. Sure the game mechanics were beautifully sound and the level designs were pretty decent, but said levels all looked exactly the same and there was hardly any substance to the style. Let alone the story itself is ill-motivating and very bland and ill-paced. From a decent genre of first person shooting sci-fi adventure/horror that was Prey, where the lines of supernatural elements and science fiction blends beautifully within a living starship, is brought down to a very ill-contrived reboot where familiarity and generalization takes the good out of everything that was to enjoy.  Arkane basical...

Anomaly Class: Solar Item:   S-761 Threat Level: Blue Containment Procedures: S-761 is to be kept in a standard containment storage in a secure section of the X-Facility. Only those of Class 2 personnel with security clearance Beta and higher are to have access to S-761. For the duration of an A-9 council member’s service, they are presented with one S-761 tablet. This same procedure will apply to the position of Director. Description: S-761 is a large glass jar, during the time of discovery, contains one thousand, five hundred and thirty seven orange florescent colored pills. At a glance, ingestion of the pill did not cause any severe side effects or beneficiary usages. That was until at 5/27/20XX when a Class-3 personnel was supposedly terminated during a containment breach. Several minutes after his death, the Class-3’s body combusted into flames that burned for approximately ten seconds, leaving behind a massive lump of ash and soot. Thirty seconds in, what app...

Anomaly Class: Solar Item: S-551 Threat Level: Green Containment Procedures: S-551 is to be kept in a containment cell. Personnel of Abrahamic faith are to attend to S-551 at least every Sunday. The same protocol follows for any day during Abrahamic holidays including lent, fasting, Christmas, Hanukah, Good Friday, Hijra, Passover, etc.  Description:  S-551 has multiple characteristics defining its appearance depending on personnel’s piousness and beliefs. The most common characteristics reported by members of every faith is that S-551 is a humanoid skull. Anthropologists have deduced from studying the materials from the skull, and the skull itself, that S-551 is over [REDACTED] years old. The genetic compound of the skull shows no records of any human or subspecies hominids that match it. S-551 is sentient and shows cognitive functions. Discovery and recovery of the object took place at 19XX when local reports detail a discovery and attack of a hidden multi-fa...

Mass In 2065, Von Braun Aerospace unveiled the controversial physics defying Mass Drive, capable of warping and reducing the surrounding ship of its mass to absolute zero. Ships were capable of exceeding 1.5 times the speed of light. In 2070, Von Braun revealed the 2 nd generation of the Mass Drive, dubbed the Mark II Vittore Mass Drive after its original inventor. It utilizes solar energy stored as a method of powering the drive and the ship itself for long term space exploration. Expeditions were sent to determine habitability and colonization. In 10 standard years, Humanity has colonized the Moon, Mars, Ganymede, Io, Europa, Titan, Triton, Calisto, Phoebus and Deimos. In the future, plans to terraform Venus are being evaluated. 2077, Axom Industries created a powerful thinking computer under the name Durendal. Its purpose, to lead exploratory science vessels across the depths of deep space. It was this year the Mark III Vittore Mass Drive was unveiled. Durendal was s...

This is a personnel viewpoint really but I rather point these out accordingly my gripes about indie horror games I've seen in the past year and a half. 1. Lack of functionality. I.E. Walking Simulators in a horror game. Or taking control away from the player. 2. Predictable plots. 7 times out of 10, the big reveal is often the father or the brother paying for their mistakes and the victims are usually family members or the wife/the daughter. And they may or may not be reliving their personnel hell 3. Bonus points if the environment is akin to Kojima's P.T. 4. Every indie horror game has a P.T. formula. 5. Every indie horror game with psychological horror elements will pull a Konami and follow the stagnant repressed guilt/punishment in Silent Hill 2. 6. The game has either no coherent plot, or is trying to be too vague in a faux attempt to be 'mysterious' or 'complex.' 7. If your playable character is a victim in any given situation in present or...