What Did We Play Yesterday?

Now that my country life sim experience has been irrevocably shaken by the Stardew Valley modding community, I decided to take a break and play a few Yume Nikki fangames. Getting RPG Maker 2000 games to run in Windows 8 takes a little extra effort, but not much. I only needed to change Windows system locale to Japanese and download the RPG Maker 2000 Runtime Environment (RTPe).

.flow / dotflow was a bit underwhelming. It felt muddy and bleak, more unpleasant than surreal. There's a bit of gore. At one point, Sabitsuki was beheaded by a guillotine door-portal. For me, it's a few steps down from Yume Nikki. Most of the scenery was either derivative or ugly. It dulled my enthusiasm a bit, so I wasn't expecting much when I fired up Yume 2kki next.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Yume 2kki is a work-in-progress collaborative fan sequel. It is awesome. I would even venture to say it is bodacious. The game is huge. The current zip weighs in at 650MB, that's without the runtime environment. It expands what worked in the original while smoothing down rough edges. The graphics are great, the dreamscapes are creative and varied, and the level design is tighter, giving Urotsuki's journey more focus.

The newest English translation is for version 0.101, which is significantly smaller than the most current version of the game, 0.104. Most of the worlds have no text, but there is a library world with lots of books and the translation covers most of them. Otherwise, I've been playing 0.104.

I've reached the point in Stardew Valley where I'd like to streamline the experience. I don't want to outright cheat but a few tweaks are in order. I had certain expectations about the types of mods a game like this would have. Cute hats, for instance. Rabbits of various colors. NPC portrait variations. I knew the game was mod-friendly, but I didn't appreciate how accessible the pixel art style makes it, in terms of cosmetic changes.

What I'm saying is I was not prepared for how many nude mods this game has.

I definitely wasn't prepared for the Hot Barn mod, which replaces all the livestock with, um, naked men, who can be milked and shaved and bred and so forth.

Now. I understand the current state of this journal might lead one to believe I actively sought this mod out. I assure you I did not. It is #57 on the top mod list. Now that PonyTown Farm, once ironically named, has become a frighteningly real possibility, I decided I was gonna dive straight down this rabbit hole to hell.

Why yes, there is more, I'm glad you asked.

Undare has also made a Hot Crafting Males mod. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to click that link, but in the event you didn't, this mod turns all the crafting stations into naked men in various stages of bondage. These hapless fellows create various in-game substances--jam, honey, beer, coal--through... well, it isn't explicitly stated and I won't conjecture.

Friends, I have seen some weird mods, but this tops it. I went onto the Nexus for a goddamn calendar mod (which isn't hosted there, by the way) and now every time I fire up this stupid game I'm going to remember that someone somewhere has a barn full of dudes and they freaking milk them. I thought I had no innocence left to lose. Alas.