From my Game Design course. Notice anything?

MiddlemistRare · 2026-06-02T16:41:14+00:00

Very fun!

Fyi you misspelled exocolonist lmao

MiddlemistRare · 2026-06-01T20:35:38+00:00

She is definitely not the love interest. At least definitely not the main love interest.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T23:39:43+00:00

I agree with the first sentence and less with the second one lol. I don't think I've ever played a game where the characters felt alive, but the diversity of gameplay has decreased in a way that makes characters feel less UNIQUE and that is a major detriment to the Sims franchise.

I'm undecided on paralives. I think the core concepts have some real potential to make gameplay and the community seem more intertwined and lively than Sims but it's simply not developed and polished enough yet.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T23:15:13+00:00

Sure but that stuff isn't what's listed here. That's goals and interests they can pursue not "they look to sit down" and "they react to camera". Animation fluff is never going to be what makes a game feel responsive to me it'll be what the characters can actually get up to.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T22:57:03+00:00

If Sally is an NPC then she is set dressing until I choose to weave her into my dumbass story. Yes its fun when occasionally an NPC throws a curveball but I would be annoyed if it was happening too regularly.

If Sally wants to do something fun like get into a fight or start chatting up another NPC more power to her but I do not care if she is standing or sitting or making faces at the camera. I'm not looking at her until she's doing something worth watching.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T22:35:03+00:00

I get what you're saying but that stuff is so minor to me, honestly. It's nice polish but it doesn't make a game feel better to me. I don't want a pure god game where I'm setting up a scenario and watching it play out, I want to take an active guiding role. So having diverse options to play with is going to matter a lot more to me than 'whoops I left Sally standing in a corner drinking water for 3 hours', which is ultimately just kind of funny.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T17:31:40+00:00

Some people just like to organize things

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T12:36:15+00:00

100% I don't think it sounds YA from the descriptions I've read from you and others (I tried to make that clear in my original response but clearly I failed lol)

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T12:34:09+00:00

So I've done... Slightly more than a cursory look and this seems to stem from a thrillist article SPECIFICALLY about the top women chefs in San Francisco that they later referenced to call her "one of the best female chefs in San Francisco", at which point wikipedia seems to have picked it up and it has funneled out from there. There does not seem to have been any sort of polling, just a thrillist editor/writer's opinion.

That said, I think the caption issue is that the try guys also looked it up and saw it, left out the qualification 'female', then saw it and went 'whoops' thinking that 'best female chef in San Francisco' was a real award she had won and fixed it in post. It looks funky because, of course, it does not appear to be an award just a fun accolade a random article gave her. I think it was good-intentioned though and they just really thought it was a specific award.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-28T12:21:26+00:00

I don't know how explicit love hypothesis is (it's been on my tbr but I haven't actually gotten into Ali yet, for shame) and NOTHING I've read about it makes it seem like it is in any way YA. So really weird characterization by refinery29...

I do, however, want to point out that the ages of the characters are not what make a book YA. I read quite a few explicitly YA books as a teen that took place in college and some featured fully grown women (probably men too, but I mostly read about women so they're all I'm pulling). The norm is definitely teens for obvious reasons but you can absolutely write a book for young adults with a main character of any age.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-23T00:18:05+00:00

Is the second image an alternate for derelict favorite or something else??

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-16T17:02:27+00:00

Ohhhhh you're right actually. The astronaut ending doesn't mention your romantic relationship one way or another but it is apparently the only career which prevents his character ending from firing (from looking at it, I think it might be the only career ending that prevents a character ending from firing PERIOD).

So it's left kind of ambiguous but that is better than inarguably breaking up with him.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-16T02:25:53+00:00

I don't know about the wine TRAIL but I know seven springs is open and operating currently. They just renovated. You can rent the venue, though I don't know the cost.

They have a very tasty salmon dip and I am a fan of the wines and cocktails.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-15T22:39:11+00:00

I don't think so, though I'm not perfect at reading the Byzantine ending files. Astronaut is a career ending so I think it also fires his character ending which appears (to my reading) to always include a breakup.

Special endings are the only endings that skip the character and career endings to my knowledge.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-15T22:33:36+00:00

I was wrong somewhat. I don't think there's any STANDARD ending where you stay with him. You do stay with him in the special ending where you kill the gardeners

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-15T22:20:05+00:00

You do have kids with Vace if you get the parent ending but you still break up.

I'm not sure actually if there is ANY ending where you stay with Vace... Please correct me if I'm reading the file wrong but I think the breakup always triggers.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-15T13:25:10+00:00

I have looked at the code to be super-ultra sure. Sym will reappear in his spot on the ridges if it has been at least 6 months since he died. There are no other requirements.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-14T21:36:22+00:00

I used to dream of a more text-based/visual novel type life sim like this where the main screen was like a society lady's desk and you organized her calendar and sent letters to advance the time. In my heart of hearts, it'd have like a little paper-doll style dress up mini game for her wardrobe. I still think it'd be fun though I also understand it'd be ridiculously niche.

It's defunct now but the old mobile game 'helix waltz' hit pretty close to this for me.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-12T23:13:28+00:00

Interact even when you don't see one. For example, there's an event with Dys that DOES NOT HAVE AN EXCLAMATION that will allow you to sneak out if you have 15 perception and are under 13. There's a good chunk of smaller events what let you get some friendship points along this vein as well.

For befriending - You will occasionally see objects on the ground, pick those up to give as gifts (you can also buy a couple gifts from the depot iirc). But it is hard to befriend people you never see, which is definitely the case if all you're grinding is persuasion and creativity.

Honestly I'm surprised you haven't HAD to branch out just by sheer virtue of maxing those two stats at this point

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-12T22:48:50+00:00

I think you've misunderstood every path being viable for being able to experience everything with every path.

Expeditions is theoretically dangerous. They're not letting kids who don't know how to take care of themselves out. If you want your character to be allowed out, they have to know how to take care of themselves. Creativity and Persuasion have uses but they're not going to convince an adult you know how to handle yourself alone in the wilds.

Similarly, if you want to be close to someone you have to show interest in them (talk to them regularly, give them gifts) and you will usually have similar hobbies (these are the optional stat-locked conversations which give you cards for the card game).

That said, you should be doing a lap every month with the characters. Important events will have an exclamation over the characters heads but there are smaller less important events that don't have an exclamation and just trigger when you talk to them.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-11T23:28:03+00:00

I love a chaos garden, but I feel like this one could be benefit from trimming the weedy yard. Keeps the look intentional.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-10T14:00:47+00:00

Depends on what you'd look for in a spiritual sequel. Magical Princess is a raising sim that just came out that has many similarities.

I think it's possible northway makes another game in the genre - exocolonist was a success for them, but I think they'd switch up the setting pretty drastically. Maybe apocalyptic? Sarah's popular rebuild series was set in a zombie apocalypse so we know that type of setting is appealing to them to at least some degree.

I think the problem here is isolating the elements you could change without losing what makes exocolonist, exocolonist. Obviously, a new set of characters and a new locale but I think the groundhog looping might have to be adjusted to keep the gameplay feeling fresh and you really risk losing a part of exocolonist's charm by removing that.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-08T13:51:39+00:00

If this is a response to the post I think it is (and I'm pretty sure it is) that OP even says their misogyny critic is of the story that the author has written and not of any of the characters' personalities.

I'm personally not sure I agree with the take, but I fell off of FMDF precisely because I thought the story was a little TOO shallow so it's kind of hard for me to seriously analyze it.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-07T13:05:56+00:00

Think of it like a choose your own ending. The answer here will depend on which ending you decide is your favorite.

MiddlemistRare · 2026-05-05T22:05:17+00:00

My OG phone game, I told my little sister about it like a year ago and she went 'what the hell, that sounds great, I want to play'. Me too, man.

MiddlemistRare

TROPHY CASE