August 2010

Desudesudesu. Generic anime guy. I used my trusty ol’ soft-shaded cel technique, plus random things I’ve learned from tutorials, plus whatever techniques felt right to do at the time.

I think that this is the first time in my life that I have ever successfully done the “all hair originating from a single point” thing.

The subject matter is Mikoto from Princess Princess; he rarely smiles like this, and don’t let him catch you calling him ‘Miko-chan.’

Princess Princess belongs to Mikiyo Tsuda and Studio Deen
Please respect the artist and do not use this image for any purposes (forum avatar, signature, Web graphics, banners, any personal use or commercial gain). (Exceptions?)
Do not trace, copy, or alter in any way. Do not remove signatures or watermarks.
Do not save and/or upload elsewhere (Photobucket, Flickr, Tumblr, etc.).

May 8, 2011

Hi there!  Welcome to our FIRST EVER INSTALLMENT of This Game I’m Playing.

Since today is Mother’s Day, a day that my mom always says is a great day to safely assume there won’t be any more frosts (hooray, Springtime!) and is therefore the perfect day to go outside and do some gardening…  Well, the most obvious game we should review is Gardening Mama!  I mean, can you even get any more appropriate than that?

First off, I wanna get us started by saying that this game is freaking adorable.  I’d actually never played any of the Cooking Mama series besides small demos, so this was my first actual purchase of the series. What made me dive into it?  Well, I rather like quirky minigames.  I also like flowers/girly things in general, and pixel art, and happy colors.  When I saw the box art for this game, my little heart squee’d with joy. SO MANY BRIGHT COLORS AND THOSE FLOWERS ARE SO CUTE OMG THIS GAME LOOKS SO CUTE AHHH

So anyway.

The general gameplay is the same as any other Cooking Mama installments. The process of growing flowers is handled through touch screen-controlled minigames, which basically follow the same steps you’d take in real life but sometimes Mama’s methods are pretty out there.

BUT BEFORE WE GET TO THE MINIGAMES

I like checking out the other game options before playing the actual game. \( ._.)/

This is the Decorate the Garden mode.  The dotted outlines are places where we can put cute garden decorations and flowers!  There are actually a lot of customization options, but right now we just see a lot of “?” icons because they need to be unlocked by playing the actual game. c; The empty plots (surrounded by pink picket fences) would even showcase the flowers that you’ve grown so far! Cute!! Yeah, we should probably get on that whole “growing flowers” thing. Like, that should be the main part of this review.

NOPE. LET’S DRESS UP MAMA FIRST.  The menu option that says “Make it Fancy” leads to this. More “?” icons. MANNN. I guess we really should actually do some gardening. Those secret dress-up options aren’t going to unlock themselves. (Bee-tee-dubs, the colorful flowers that you can drag around to make the floral headpiece are so pretty. ; 3;~)

OKAY COOL. LET’S GET PLANTING.

Oh hey look those decorations we placed actually show up in the garden while we’re working.  And Mama* is actually wearing that spiffy outfit we put together for her. Neat! *Having never actually played a Cooking Mama game before this, I’m assuming that we refer to this character as “Mama.” o_O

Pansies are my most favoritest flowers, so we’re going to start with those!  Sowing the seeds! That should be easy! Let’s get started!

Some simple games get those seeds in the ground! Your touch screen controls things like directing the shovel, tilting the watering can, and patting down soil. c:  It’s all pretty leisurely, even with a timer counting down the seconds. I messed up one step, but Mama promised she’d make things right! XD

Yup, everything turned out okay. c:

And now we wait a bit while the flowers are sleeping (I guess?).

I might continue this and show how the flowers turned out when they finished growing, but let’s wrap up this post for now!

Hope you enjoyed my little article! I’ll be covering more cute games in the future!  Have a happy Mother’s Day!

If you want to check out Gardening Mama for yourself, here’s where you can find it on Amazon and here it is on Play-Asia!

May 5, 2011

My situation today. I find myself with three animals in my care despite the fact that I have really bad cat allergies and don’t really know how to take care of a dog. 8C LET’S SEE IF I CAN KEEP THEM ALL ALIVE FOR THREE DAYS.

May 5, 2011

Anticlimactic first comic! We’re all in for it, now. This is it. The comics. They have begun.

May 2, 2011

Check out what I worked on last night!

Consider this a sneak peek at some of the Boutique items to come. The above pic is all of the cool stuff I gathered up to make molds out of.

Here’s how the molds looked before I baked them:

They turned out great! Now I can make all kinds of cute little clay things!

These will become “deco” options on various accessories once I get the Boutique going! Expect to see them in soft pastel colors. <3