Video Games

Enemies and Hatred in “Magical Girl’s Witch Trial”

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Note: The following content contains complete spoilers for the game 《魔法少女的魔女审判》 (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial, Witch Trial), as well as some side spoilers for classic ADV games.

As a rare large-scale ADV game this year, Witch Trial is probably the best ADV game this year. 《无法成眠的伊达键 – From AI：梦境档案》 (AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative) may be too small, while 《百日战纪 -最终防卫学园-》 (Hundred Days War Chronicle – Final Defense Academy -) and 《终天教团》 (The Eternal Order) have too much hype and are more like a grind to play, so their bangumi scores are not as good as Witch Trial.

But it has a clear difference from many common ADVs, that is, Witch Trial avoids mentioning, evaluating, or reflecting on social organizations and social phenomena. 《Ever17》 is about the protagonists fighting against immoral pharmaceutical companies, and the protagonists of 《命运石之门》 (Steins;Gate) are fighting against the government doing evil experiments and the scientific organization that monitors the world.

Even 《人狼村之谜》 (Raging Loop) discusses the oppression of indigenous people and their beliefs by ancient Japanese people (details can be found at 土蜘蛛), and some villages are subject to unnatural religious manipulation. So, Witch Trial, which mentions witches, should mention past witch hunts like 《海市蜃楼之馆》 (The House in Fata Morgana), right?

However, it doesn’t. There are no social organizations or social phenomena in Witch Trial that can be regarded as enemies. Even the causes of the psychological problems of more than a dozen characters are mostly simply from their families (or guardianship facilities). Only Sakura 羽艾玛 Emma and Nikaido 希罗 Hiro’s psychological problems come from Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki, who committed suicide due to being bullied at school.

But later, after learning that this was part of Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan, school bullying became a background board for simply advancing the plot, rather than a topic that could be discussed in depth. So who is the enemy? Owl Warden? He is just a prison warden, and the specific orders come from higher up. Kurobaku 冰上梅露露 Meruru? She is only an accomplice, and her plan even allowed the magical girls to live longer, so it is difficult to truly hate her.

The Great Witch Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki? She is indeed the culprit who spread the witch factor, which led to many people being murdered and isolated. But after chatting properly, they can still understand each other and give the protagonists a way out, so she can’t be considered an enemy. So who is the enemy? Is it the humans who are carrying out genocide against the witches on the island?

Maybe, but Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki is the smallest witch, (next is speculation) Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s ability is not enough to find and murder the king or pope who issued the order. Then, based on her own abilities, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki came up with a good way. That is to spread the witch factor to humans, making them the existence that she hates and wants to exterminate (Magneto in 《X战警》 (X-Men) also tried this approach).

It’s just that the spread is too slow. Over the years, the influence of religion has become very low, and witch hunts no longer exist. Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan to turn humans into the race she hated failed, so she turned to exterminating humans. Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki began to spread the modified witch factor, so some girls who are over 15 years old, have psychological trauma, and have accumulated stress will become witches with strong murderous intent.

In this way, humans will hunt witches in their own group, which is Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s revenge on humans. And when asymptomatic infected people in humans, that is, the witch factor exists in all human bodies, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki will release magic to kill witches and exterminate all humans.

In this way, the object of Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s revenge has disappeared. The religion that used to be high above and could easily hunt witches and murder others. To the old version of religion that has declined and almost no one believes in (now they believe in the improved version, which has removed a lot of violent content). But this also raises a question, should humans bear the sin of exterminating witches many years later?

Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki also knew that her revenge was not very reliable, so she handed the trigger to the pure, kind, and well-behaved Emma. As a result, in the ending, Emma did not become Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s tool of revenge. Instead, Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki gave up revenge after everyone’s persuasion. (Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki: “I have no enemies.” It seems that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki.)

gledos generally likes 《魔法少女的魔女审判》 (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial) very much. The deep emotions between multiple characters are indeed very outstanding in ADV. However, the ending feels a bit unsatisfactory. After all, the deeper black幕 problems have not been solved, just like 《Remember 11》, which is a bit melancholy.

I wanted to complain about Yukishiro 月代雪 Yuki’s plan, but as I wrote, I found a more reasonable reason for her. Yes, many works have so-called enemies, and it is rare to be able to write such a work based on having no enemies. Judging from the evaluations and scores, most people also accept this ending, which can be regarded as a great innovation.

Postscript: Inspired by the dolphin radio wave video 《后叮咚鸡时代的爱情——〈魔法少女的魔女审判〉测评》 (The Love in the Post-Ding Dong Chicken Era – Review of “Magical Girl’s Witch Trial”), which mentioned that the game deliberately avoided political topics.

Irisu Syndrome!

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The author of 《Doki Doki Literature Club!》 Dan Salvato introduced the sources of inspiration for his game, namely 《Yume Nikki: Dream Diary》, 《Eversion》 and 《Irisu Syndrome!》. These games are all psychologically terrifying enough. Among them, 《Eversion》 is a work from the independent game competition 「Ordinary Book」, and its name and concept even originate from H. P. Lovecraft.

However, the most important inspiration may be 《Irisu Syndrome!》 (although it has a similar name to 《Phobia Syndrome》, it does not have bloody performances). Because this game should be the first game to advance the game plot by checking the root directory files. Every time you complete an ending, you can find a .txt file in the root directory of the game, gradually piecing together the story behind the scenes.

It’s just that the ending of 《Irisu Syndrome!》 is related to the score of the elimination game. It takes a lot of time and effort to reach a certain score to unlock the ending, which is a bit troublesome to play (you can refer to Suisei Hoshimachi‘s play video). But the performance effect is indeed very interesting, and it will exit the game in some endings.

The technical details of 《Irisu Syndrome!》 are a bit special. It uses the D language and Box2D as a 2D physics engine. The D language is not popular, but Box2D is quite popular and is used in 《Angry Birds》, 《Limbo》, Noita and 《Balatro》.

If you are interested in the plot, you can play the free official Chinese version. If it is difficult to get a high score, you can watch Senra San‘s commentary video, which also corrects the translation errors in the Chinese version, or watch Kokon La-Doh‘s commentary article.

Yandere Protagonist’s Metagame (Cyber Ghost)

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The recent VOCALOID song “いますぐ輪廻” (Immediately Reincarnated) is really good. The content is a yandere female protagonist + a meta-game text adventure game. Afterwards, I saw “【いますぐ輪廻】选择你的赛博女鬼（meta游戏）” (Choose Your Cyber Ghost (Meta Game)) and “【いますぐ輪廻/赛博女鬼】你身边的人可以是我吗？” (Can I Be the Person Beside You?) in the recommended videos. Both use tracing and modification to showcase the heroines of related genre games.

The tracing and modification versions feature Eri Takabe, Miyuki Sone, Chiemi Serizawa, Monika, Internet Overdose / Sugar, Yandere-chan, Makina Sakurazaki, and Mita. The names of their source works are too long, so I won’t show them here. If needed, you can view the works list. Eri Takabe is probably just a filler because she’s not a yandere, but she is a combination of a beautiful girl + meta-game, so she’s probably considered an origin work of yandere female protagonist + meta-game.

The first character to become popular and go viral was probably Monika in 2017. She likely influenced later works such as Love Love School Days and 《Mita》, as well as 《Lovey Dovey Nursery 2》 and PockeDate! – Pocket Dating Simulator, which did not appear in the tracing and modification video.

Judging from 《Mita》’s estimated 3.5 million copies sold, the two developers can split tens of millions of dollars in revenue. This can be considered a revival of the genre, and it has made other developers consider this genre. In the future, there may be meta-games with higher quality yandere female protagonists.

The popularity of “cyber ghost” games may be related to the popularity of herbivore men, beta males, and fourth love. In 21st century gender discussions and research, toxic masculinity has been theorized. This may have influenced many creators, resulting in many male characters who are not traditional, but more gentle, delicate, and sensitive.

P.S.: So I’m curious, do herbivore men / beta males / fourth love men tend to prefer “cyber ghost” themed games?

P.S. 2: channelcaststation, the MV creator for 『いますぐ輪廻』, is amazing. The VOCALOID songs with MVs made by him have over 10 million views. One picture flow, even music without an MV, is really too much of a loss on this network dominated by visual traffic. (Fortunately, sometimes listeners will create unofficial MVs for it)

Skin Censorship in the Netease Version of Minecraft

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The Netease version of Minecraft has many shortcomings compared to the international version (original version). In response, Netease has made many optimizations, including lowering the barrier to uploading to the marketplace, allowing skin creators to easily obtain revenue, but Netease’s censorship is very outrageous.

At the beginning of May 2021, only one block of the body below the neck was allowed to be exposed, so the neckline position needed to be raised.

In mid-May 2021, skin-colored textures could not be higher than the knee position, so mini-skirts that exposed the knees and above could not be drawn. (This rule seems to have been relaxed later)

Unknown time, you cannot expose the stomach or back, and it will be rejected if it exceeds 3 blocks in height.

In mid-July 2025, do not include skin-colored blocks within 5 pixels from the top to the bottom of the leg. Netease has begun to strictly review skins again. It may be during this time that someone used the dual-layer concealable feature of skins to create a surface that looks normal, but hides the outer layer to reveal exposed skin……

The Best Game Consoles for Offline Play

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In February 2025, the PlayStation Network servers were down for 20 hours, which not only made games like “Fortnite”, “Call of Duty”, and “Roblox” that use PSN unplayable, but also made some “single-player games” that require online verification, such as “Metaphor Refantazio”, unplayable. In addition, the PS5 Slim’s optical drive could not be installed on this day, because the optical drive and the console need to be bound online.

So, assuming a global crisis suddenly occurs and PSN or the entire network goes offline, many games on the PS5 may be unplayable. Although the PS5 can be activated offline and install disc games, game updates are also a problem. Microsoft doesn’t care about discs in the Xbox Series generation, so it can probably be ignored in an offline gaming environment.

Switch may be the most suitable game console for offline play, because its handheld form factor makes game developers consider the importance of offline play. Even many EA games can be played offline, such as “Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit“. And in offline mode, you can allow a Switch with a higher game version to share game update patches to other Switches.

PCs such as SteamDeck, which have the appearance of handhelds, will encounter a large number of games that require online verification. For example, the above-mentioned EA games, as well as “Persona 5 Royal” and other games that use Denuvo encryption. Although Denuvo encryption allows offline games, you may need to manually switch Steam to offline mode and restart it. Offline games seem to rely on signatures, and the signatures can only be maintained for a short time, and only re-connecting to the Internet can update the signatures.

Swtich 2 continues the portability of the Switch, so it should continue this offline gaming advantage. Although the popularity of home broadband is already very high, making offline gaming less important, in some cases, having a complete offline gaming function still has some advantages.

Why Service Game Players Should All Pay Attention to Patch Notes

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Some players only think about experiencing the game itself and ignore the update logs. This is certainly a legitimate way for players to play, but it may not save time and may lead to more detours. For example, some events are only announced in the update logs. If you don’t notice them or your friends don’t tell you, you may miss the event.

In addition, developer interviews may introduce the game’s future development roadmap. Although most players want more benefits, balance adjustments, and new content, increasing profits is a more important goal for manufacturers. Therefore, paying attention to interviews can adjust expectations and avoid the possibility of not understanding the update logic (although even if you read it, you may not be able to see through it; this is an unpredictable stage of fate for anyone).

The name is also an important thing. Games or updates launched by unknown or infamous manufacturers or game developers may require more consideration. Commercial games are generally fine; you can basically find the company, studio, or specific person’s name. It’s just that some completely anonymous games, where you can’t even find someone to take the blame, are hard to trust.

Finally, there’s the game community. There should be a place to discuss the game itself, update logs, and future roadmaps, whether it’s comparing it to other games or comparing it to previous versions. If a game doesn’t have an official community and uses various means to prevent third-party player communities from discussing it, it’s not necessarily a bad game, but it’s definitely an unconfident one.

P.S.: Some games now change repeatedly, making it impossible to see the future development roadmap. Therefore, players as a whole will reduce課金吧, because this change may make players lack confidence, then affect the future of the game, and finally the value of課金 purchased items and accessories will plummet, and even the game will be shut down directly.