Tuesday 29 November 2016

Blog Carnival Day 2

It's time for the second day of the CCSF blog carnival, and that means another new topic to discuss:

"How would you describe your playing style? Do you have lots of worlds, or a few? Do you have strict wolfling runs or do you individually nurture your creatures, or both? Any particular habits or quirks?"

Another interesting topic! I'm not exactly sure where to begin; there's a lot of good points to talk about.


I only really have two worlds that I play on - one with naturally born Norns and one with genetically altered Norns. I did this to keep the genetically modified Norns from breeding with the normal Norns and creating even bigger genetic messes than I've done with my own intentional modifications.

Modifications is a good point to bring up; I like to dabble around a bit in the genetics kit. In most cases so far the result has been something significantly different from what my intention was because I never really bothered to learn about the genes properly before I started to muck about with them. It only makes sense that it didn't exactly work out... either way, I still had a lot of fun playing around with and learning more about genetics even if it doesn't always work out right. The complexity of the genetics system and the brains is actually my favourite thing about Creatures.

As for my playing style itself, I'd say that I'm quite coddling. I've never tried to do a Wolfling run and even if I did I'd probably fail at it because I would eventually just cave and try to convince the Norns to actually go and eat the goddamn food...

Generally, I spend a lot of my time playing Creatures checking to make sure they're all doing OK and coercing them to eat when they aren't but clearly should be. You all know what Norns are like.

Similarly, if I notice that one particular Norn is in trouble (whether that be through sickness or dropping life force or whatever) I'll pay more attention to them and try to do everything to get them back to health. Sometimes I'll find myself getting frustrated with the Norn after awhile if it still doesn't help itself and, I won't lie, a slap or two will sometimes be exchanged... I know, it's not great, but you gotta be cruel to be kind sometimes...

4 comments:

  1. Even when I sit back and try not to do anything in my C1 world, I find that I just can't avoid helping a Norn or Grendel who just needs a piece of food. It's amazing what a carrot and a nap can do! Sounds like we're pretty similar, especially since "coddling" sounds like a perfect word to describe what I do.

    Have you ended up with any interesting genetic mutations in your genetically altered Norns? I haven't had a lot of interesting things happen lately, so it's nice to hear about those wild genomes that make no sense!

    And I hear you about getting frustrated. I talk to my computer screen when the Norns aren't listening, as if that will do anything. Ha! Although I will say that I've also been known to dole out a slap or two when it's the last resort.

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    1. Well, I don't ever hatch eggs in my world for genetically altered Norns because I don't think it would be pretty if two Norns with completely different sets of weird genetics mixed, even if it would be interesting. As for non-altered Norns, any that have currently been hatched have any genetic mutations already documented, either in a blog post or on their sections in the "Norns" page, which you can reach from the link on the left near the top of the page. There are a couple of interesting ones in unhatched Norns; looking at my list a couple that stand out are one with four (yes, four) new mutations, one who can't feel fear, and one who will sneeze as a reaction to being hungry. The eggs for these Norns are all in a jumbled up heap though, so I unfortunately can't just hatch all the interesting ones first because I don't know which eggs the interesting ones are :/

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  2. There's just something about C1 that makes people want to coddle their norns, isn't there? I usually play hands-off in DS, and even I have to take care of my C1 norns. Those sad little faces they make sometimes... you just have to cheer them up.

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    1. Yeah I know! And it's so heartwarming when they give you those giant smiles sometimes. I've never played a game other than C1, so I think it would be interesting to see if my playing style would change were I to play a C3 or DS.

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