[I] [CE] Anima De Machina

[that1stickman]

The world, so cruel, cares not for your mind
Although you've traveled far
But when lost, look at the sky and find
A guiding northern star

Entry for the Year of Luigi Comp hosted by GuardianDreamer

Play now: https://www.aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=146309

Credits

Spoiler : :

Bunker image by Jakob Ehrensvärd
All other sprite edits by That1Stickman

Walkthrough

Spoiler : :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cxs ... sp=sharing

[GuardianDreamer]

I'll probably put up more detailed thoughts of this up at another point once more people have played this, but I recommend this quite a lot. In particular, I loved what it did with the theme. Play videogame.

[Spongesonic]

This is a fun little idea with a really neat twist. I enjoyed playing through it. Well done!

[DJJ6800]

Spoiler : :

"This was a surprise, but a welcome one to be sure."

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT REFERENCE. Also, wow this was a unique case. Very interesting idea. I like it!

[risefromtheashes]

(Sunny, they/any)
Really fun little case! Well done on the twist and the gameplay was very innovative.

Spoiler : :

I love Tammy and CERBERUS, and I hate billionaires!

[DeathByAutoscroll]

A well executed case with some brilliant sprite edits/CGs and an engaging, ever developing, mystery. Well worth a play.

[Blackrune]

I was sad it ended so soon, which I suppose is the best proof what a cool concept this has.

[GuardianDreamer]

Me, wisely: I will wait a while after Anima De Machina has released to give full thoughts about it so people can experience it without me giving much away. This'll be cool. I sure hope I don't literally forget to do this for a long time because of working on the comp ceremony and my job.

... So anyway.

Spoiler : Full Case Spoilers :

In my original review for Anima De Machina and while writing Brett in the ceremony, I purposefully used exact words and obscuring of information to hide Ceberus' existence. This is something I thought about for a while, whether or not I wanted to reveal it (though if I decided to do so, I would have asked that1stickman beforehand to see what they thought). Ultimately though I decided to pretend that Brett was the main character the entire time and deliberately obfuscate the twist (if you reread my review and the Anima De Machina section in the ceremony, you'll be able to appreciate how I technically never lied about it). The reason is simple, and it's related to one of the awards that Anima De Machina got: I compared it to Metal Gear Solid 2's infamous twist in the ceremony. I'm not sure which entry in The Year of Luigi surprised me the most overall, but Anima De Machina is definitely the one that had the single biggest moment that totally caught me off-guard. When I think about it objectively, the "twist" is actually fairly early on but I still wanted people to be caught off-guard in the same way I was, or at least be given the chance to.

My brain is the type of brain that thinks of many different ideas about how a plot can go, often having very mutually exclusive ideas co-exist in my mind as if that's normal. This was my first time ever seeing a work by that1stickman. If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure Anima De Machina is the first project publicly released by that1stickman on AAO (though I know they have an unreleased comp entry from Outside the Court which was earlier than this). So booting this up, I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't even know if this was a complete entry or not, or how long it was supposed to be. I ended up really pleasantly surprised by the unique setting and how Cerberus was implemented as a protagonist. In my head while playing through the entries I always kept the idea of "what if this entry has a sudden protagonist shift, like I listed in one of the examples for theme relevance" but Anima De Machina still managed to surprise me since Cerberus is such a unique player character.

In regards to the gameplay, I initially thought that Cerberus using up the HP bar to perform certain actions meant that a game over state was possible if you kept wasting time and examining the wrong things, so of course my gremlin brain did what it always did and immediately tried to game over. This quickly revealed that my assumption was mistaken: the game is designed so Cerberus' energy isn't depleted past the point of no return unless you go for the bad ending. Still, while it dispelled the illusion of consequence from my brain, I'm also the type who literally does not have penalties in my cases because they don't suit what I'm going for, so I was perfectly happy to go along with this. I found the gameplay and use of the examination function really interesting anyway, and it made me think a lot about how investigations could be done differently from standard Ace Attorney fare.

Admittedly, while the presentation style using the AAI mini sprites is very unique and nice, it's something that comes with a personal caveat for me. I sort of mentioned that while I found the setting really interesting, I also found it hard to follow at points. For me, the use of the mini sprites rather than full portraits (like in Brett's section) made it harder for me to keep track of who everyone was and what was happening exactly. On the other hand, this arguably has a good point to it, to show what the world would look like from Cerberus' perspective. So while it might not quite click with me, I can at least appreciate the intent behind it and I think other people would jive with it a lot more.

It was a nice story and I was glad to have this as an entry in the Year of Luigi. I wish that1stickman the best of luck in any future projects. Truly Brett is Solid Snake and Cerberus is Raiden.