wobblegong: Stylized blue fish with spots and stripes. (Default)
2018-12-25 12:47 am

I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up

Awhile ago I was idly browsing Neogeen's tumblr and one character kept popping up over and over again. I narrowly managed to pull enough info from the descriptions to google up that it was from "Arcane Zoo" which led me to a dA page: "Arcane Zoo reopening!" (Nov 2017)

I was tired so I stuck the bookmark on a hotplate and shelved it. Tonight I was tired but in need of brain-snacks so I finally pulled it back out.

TIL that "Art Role Playing Games" (ARPG but good luck keeping that distinct from Action Role Playing Game ARPG) are an entire genre on dA– not that they're beholden to the platform, but dA has/had a confluence of features that lent it to them. Approximately: petsite meets tabletop and you play via making art.

Facts:
1) I've struggled for years to find ways to motivate myself artistically.
2) Ooooooh booooooy am I a sucker for gamification.

Two hours later I'm still trawling for an ARPG I'm interested in– Arcane Zoo looked good (and isn't locked to dA....) but I wasn't seeing much activity on its forums and it wasn't on point for my preferred aesthetics. Most of the top ARPGs are Standard Furrybait: you've got your cats, you've got your dogs, you've got your horses, and then you start in on cat/dog/horse + another animal = special new species unique to the setting (cat-moth, dog-bear, etc). I'm not into those so my searching has required some effort, made all the more exciting by dA's total disdain for/lack of support for searching.

So far I've found two unrelated games whose key made-up animal could be described as "floofdino dragon". Color me sleepily intrigued....

An incomplete list of ARPGs I've found: )