## 16 August, 2014

### Story of the blanks review

Back in April 2011 the first creepypasta games were just Sonic-tier games called Luna Games, but then on July 1st came out a little scary game with some narrative to it so you can remember the so-called game more for the story rather than the gameplay.
The game was later remembered in depictions of artwork for it's use of nightmarish silhouettes. About the only unique thing in this game are the silhouettes.
The Story:
Story of the Blanks uses a simplistic witch-hunt and curse plot. The event happens in a little village called Sunny Town. Ruby is a young yellow-eyed and yellow haired character which finds a ruby gem on the ground and retrieves it to Roneo who lost it. This in turn makes her talent for finding lost objects appear in the form of a magnifying glass mark on her rump. The town's people are from the post-classical era so they're very superstitious which makes them see the mark as a curse and they burn Ruby in a fireplace. Coincidentally the personage's name ''Ruby'' is also the plot device object, a ruby gem, which gives a blatant hint to let you figure out what happened.
The town's actions of killing one of their own results in a curse which turns them into demon silhouettes and they're forced to relive the same night once every year.
Centuries later... Ruby is now a ghost and makes Applebloom curious enough to follow her ghost. Bloom finds the town inside the forest and retraces the steps Ruby made, even retrieving the same ruby she did, Ruby then leads Applebloom to the place she died, ghosts have a thing for that. Then the town's illusion disappears and you see the buildings left in ruins, indicating they've been left there for centuries. Too long did not read: Applebloom escapes the horde of zombie ponies mostly by herself and her fast running speed. The ending of the story doesn't really have a conclusion, it leaves a lot of things unexplained such as what happened to Ruby and Mitta.
The characterization of the town's people is very shallow and forgettable. They share the same stereotype of an average farmer from the ages 1480 to 1750; superstitious, scared, irrational and downright evil. In other words you can't work with these characters for an alternate interpretation.
It's an alright story for what could very well have been one of the Brothers Grimm folktales, but there's a lot of inconsistencies and unexplained things in this little story which could have been fleshed out more.
For example Mitta is the only one which seems to remember what happened, while all the others just ignorantly resume the same events that night without Ruby. Mitta didn't help Ruby when she needed, but she helped Applebloom escape, yet in the end it doesn't show if she got rid of the curse.
Mitta cares for the loss while all the others are too shallow to care and never realize their wrongs, yet the curse affects Mitta the exact same way. Also further more questions go unanswered: are they forever trapped in the forest, can they die, is it only for one night a year or every night, does Mitta chew them out everynight, it's kinda awkward to carry a burden in groups. The moral of the story isn't well outlined at all due to the lack of a conclusion. Mitta doesn't get any reward for not being ignorant like the rest.
Zecora is aware of the curse for living for so long in the Everfree Forest, but she doesn't make it clear if she knows more about it. There's multiple zombies in there and Applebloom seems to turn to black when she gets touched by one, which implies these things are contagious and there have been many more people which went there before Applebloom, but this is never confirmed.
The curse also isn't explained how it works or how it happens(was it the Everfree Forest? Luna? random convenient curse number 564?). For example in Scooby Doo's Zombie Island, it's a green fog which revives the dead, while The Blanks can't come up with anything to represent their curse's power.
It's quite a crappily thought-out curse if it gives the criminals even more power and thus fuels their blind beliefs. It would have been much better if in the end when they try to leave the town or harm another defenseless pony they burn alive at Applebloom's touch, just like Voldermort trying to touch Harry Potter.
Overall it accomplished it's goal of a simplistic story, but it left some holes which ruin any attempt at exploring the idea more without changing the interpretation entirely.
Game review:
Story of the Blanks fails as a horror puzzle game compared to Derp till Dawn which requires you to die on 2 altars to continue further and you're constantly on the run from the slenderman and it also combines 3D first person perspective with 2D top-view, yeah Derp till Dawn was better as a game. Story of the Blanks is more of an unfleshed mistery murder story rather than a game.
There's one phrase which I always hear when I talk about this game ''needed to be longer'' and they're right, the game lasts just around 10 minutes, 20 if you're slow and read all the dialogue. The game did need a longer story with more content to it. This review will mostly be targeted at giving out my ideas for Story of the blanks.
The game started off as a potential RPG like Zelda and Pokemon, so let's finish it in that vein. My ideas include: Applebloom getting helped by numerous npcs such as Mitta, Ruby, Twilight, Zecora.
The game should have used an introduction and exposition such as Applebloom remembering the death of her parents at the start of the game. The game has no introduction and instead feels more like one of the many random events in a Dungeons And Dragons campaign.
My loose concept is this: Applebloom drinks a potion and gets touched by a blank, you stay a little while wandering as a zombie till the potion comes into effect and you turn into a ghost and get guided by Ruby, then you go into the ghost world and Applebloom gets to meet her parents. She then uses a macguffin found in that world which enables her to touch all the blanks to burn and cure them. Alright, she finds a giant tree and eats a flower, then she gains a temporary cutie mark and touches the blanks. This idea still gives it more space for content than just running from the zombies all night through the forest.
Gameplay mechanics wise...
There were tons of objects which you couldn't use, such as hiding in water wells, going inside all the houses, using the doors like a warping device. Perhaps jump over the blockades, teleport via the water well, go inside a house and exit on the other side.
I would like it if the npcs instead defended you, rather than defend the npcs.
Some 16-bit graphics could have also made for a better game, 8-bit is too limited. Plus the blanks were suppose to have flaming eyes, judging from their dialogue portraits.
Use the black background together with the enemy silhouettes, making them invisible, black on black.
Applebloom should especially receive a leap ability, a jump and dodge ability. Very useful to jump over enemies, fences, broken bridges, etc.
There should be jumping zombies which detect your last location and jump at you, and you'll need to jump fast before they catch you first. The silhouettes just walking around is very boring, maybe more speedy silhouettes like Starlet.
Applebloom should also be capable of taking down trees to block routes, and making boulders roll down to squash them or block their path. Hiding behind Twilight and Mitta while running(the npcs acting like a large area shield). The primary way to deal with blanks should be indirectly, make others fight for you, drop things on them, intelligently block their path when in labyrinth and puzzle situations, otherwise it loses all the charm of a horror game if you can just attack them with a sword or keep them at a distance with a light.
The tree branches should entangle you and you'd have to insert the correct sequence of keystrokes like DDR to escape it.
The silhouettes could use more abilities, otherwise they're just zombies,(a more mystical version of them) abilities such as teleportation, environmental effects, multiplication, illusions, slowing you down, make them more spell-heavy, they're suppose to be mythical and mystical after all, rather than all braws and no brains like a bunch of zombies. I find the stereotypical slow zombie to be the most boring, the weakest and least scariest monster imagined. Physical monsters with no abilities never appealed to me, not even the Alien and The Thing, they lack mystery/mysticism(to conceal).
So basically, story content: Turn into zombie, go to the spirit world, Applebloom meets her parents, get enchantment cutie mark, kill all the zombies, Mitta and Ruby get reunited, good ending. Get defended by npcs, leap over terrain and dodge attacks, use twilight's light orb or hide in the darkness. Level design wise there'd be labyrinths, waterfalls, dense jungle vines, swamps, boulders to block the enemies, you'd have to craft your own pathway. That's pretty much the gist of it.
Hey, you didn't feel like the review was long and boring enough? Then have another 2 pages of blahblah:
So I don't end this post just yet, I have a few more comments about the game, and that includes the game creator Donitz's first draft for Blanks 2, the sequel.
The left side could have lead to a neat expansion to the forest, but apparently that's there to indicate a cliff.
The game could have definitely used more exploration and to give you a sense that not everything is
pre-scripted. At least you could go back a few screens so it gives you that feeling of control, that you can just go back to Twilight and not wander in the woods at night like a suicidal dumbass. I think this can be improved by letting you explore, but giving you a condition of be back before sundown or your exit will be blocked by the forest. Could have also forced you to go inside a haunted house.
Ah crap, there are in fact others before Applebloom which have went in the everfree forest that exact night and became zombies... explains the bonefiends outside the town.
I don't think a punishment is suppose to have pros, only cons. What part of, being able to turn others into zombies, that is to say cast the same curse/punishment onto others, is considered a con? Lazy writing. Same for the 'living thousands of years' part where they still exist in the same world and current time when they were suppose to be extinct.
The third song which plays while inside Sunny Town is called ''I mourn for my dear ones'' which is fitting because Mitta is lamenting for Ruby.
Sunny Town is a reference to Lavender Town from Pokemon. In the pokemon game it's called Lavender Town, but in the anime it's called Sunny Town.
Definitely could have used 16-bit graphics. The game not only used 8-bit NES graphics, but it used very low-stylized ones almost like Atari graphics, down to the very 8 sprites per line limitation which other nes games have beaten and have made much better looking 8-bit games.
The game does have an editor, if you can still find the downloadable swf link. Only one person has shown us what you can do with the game's level editor. Though that's just the end result, not the editor itself.
Hoofball is the one with the 16-bit graphics, it also came with some secrets and a level editor and source files both available by right-clicking it, which Donitz has openly said that it's best to work with Hoofball's editor rather than Blanks's editor, Hoofballs also has more empty rooms to work in. Of course, because this fandom has no dedicated game designers, nobody bothered to work in the editor and only one person put up a video on YT of SotB's editor.
I don't believe in dia de los muertos either.
Hey look a generic quote I've heard a million times before; the dead never get recognition. Naah I'll reinterpret this message in game style.
So I finally figured out what that message was about aside from the ancient zombie ponies.
It's not a story-related quote, it's a small attempt at world design. Donitz's take on Equestria is that it's filled with ancient creatures and events and they never disappear in contrast with the evolving world (e.g. dragons, manticores, earth ponies, griffons, etc.). They always remain and are waiting to be discovered/explored.
It's more of an interactive game thing rather than a story's narrative. Most games are linked together with the world design, but unfortunately we don't have a huge open-world 3D mmorpg where to apply this idea.
This generic line also refers to finding relics such as dragons, dinosaurs, Atlantis, El Dorado and exploring all the mysteries of the world and universe. Funny, cause my writer told me to stop exploring everything and leave the mistery alone in it's beauty, just like in this game's case when everyone asks for a sequel.
Otherwise if you take it as a story or moral idea, dear god just no. The context of the game paired with the message makes no sense. Who the bloody the hell gives recognition to a witch hunt and a curse, to a bunch of murderous superstitious dirty earth ponies, that is indeed best forgotten. Plus the story has no conclusion, so they're never dealt with properly, hence they still didn't get any ''recognition''. They don't rest in peace, the story just says it's what they deserve and should live like that forever. In my opinion even living as a zombie is too much of a positive thing, they're still living.
I did say there was an idea for a Story Of The Blanks 2/sequel. Donitz had the programming part for Blanks2 already finished, yes he had the files for them. All he needed were the graphics which as you can see he's not that good at and they take more time for him to make than the xml code.
Do take note that this was his first draft, which he probably would have changed, right Donitz?
Expect a lot of half-assed over-the-top fanfic-ish ideas.
Blanks sequel.
You start off as Sweetie Belle. She's in a dream, she sees Rarity and hugs her, but Rarity is a zombie blank.
Belle falls from the bed and wakes up, you find out it's Sweetie Belle's birthday. You go out of the house and on the porch there's a wrapped present lying there, you open it and find out the ruby gem from the first game.
You go around the town as the ponies act progressively weird, talking creepy and staring at you. Bunch of flickers for extra creepiness. You go to the candy shop, SugarcubeCorner, where you meet up with Pinkie Pie which tries to kill you in a long corridor, but you run off.
Scootaloo and Applebloom help you escape the crazy Ponyville which is infested by silhouettes. Applebloom takes note of the red gem and you all go back to Sunny Town from the first game. You go across some bridge which cracks and you all fall in a chasm.
You get a flashback showing three blank pony alchemists trying to earn their cutie marks by performing rituals and using magical objects like the ruby. They end up getting killed by their experiments and probably turned into the blanks.
You wake up as Applebloom and find yourself inside Sunny Town. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are now zombie ponies, and you use the magical ruby to attack with some sort of spell. Mitta intervenes again and stops everything. She takes the gem and everything goes back to normal. Sunny Town disappears, Ponyville is back to normal and the 3 fillies are outside at the edge of the forest.
So there's the story for Blanks 2 in two paragraphs. Damn that was awful and had nothing to do with the original game's story. Yes it's real, that was gonna be the sequel for Blanks if Donitz had a dedicated graphics artist. So now do you agree that a gameplay content expansion which doesn't add anything extra to the storyline is the best way to go? Good.
Prequels and sequels always carry bad connotations because they imply extra story or story modifications to the first one or simply another story entirely.
This came from the same writer that made the curse more of a buff enchantment and added that generic ''The dead lay forgotten, please give them recognition'' message at the end. So it explains itself that Donitz isn't a very thoughtful writer.
Go ask Donitz about the source files for Blanks2, let's see if he remembers it. He might still have the notepad and xml files for it.
This was the review and commentary for Story Of The Blanks.
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