Category: Articles

Articles about game design, games journalism, the games industry or maybe just games. Chill takes over hot takes, every time.

Zelda’s Wisdom #1 – New Blog, New Kitties. Welcome Soot & Shine!

Hi, I’m Zelda! I planned to redo this site this year but ended up busier than expected. With the move to Zelda.Zone I also wanted to separate my work a bit more clearly since we do a lot of things here. Starting now I have a proper “Blog” roll, Zelda’s Wisdom! You’re reading it now! Wow!

I plan to have a better landing page and separate my fan art/commissions, guides, blog, and videos into more distinct sections. But for now, I realized I never properly introduced the kitties!

Welcome to Soot & Shine!

Let me officially welcome Soot🐈‍⬛ and Shine🐈 to The Zelda Zone! While you can get complete albums of my kitties on Patreon, I plan to have a little Photo Of The Month section or something on here too for them soon.

Shine is the “Buff” colored Tabby, also known as Champagne or Beige. Soot is the Torbie, a tabby AND a tortie. They’re very different, but they’re brother and sister and bonded super well.

Shine is pretty nervous and came with a note that he shouldn’t be adopted without his mother or sister. He still refuses to be held and is a bit jumpy, but he’s MUCH calmer than he was when I adopted him. He’s extremely greedy about food though, and I suspect that’s why Soot is too—gotta eat fast or you won’t eat, around him. He makes very silly little noises, more like “mrrrerrr, merrrreh” than meows.

Read more: Zelda’s Wisdom #1 – New Blog, New Kitties. Welcome Soot & Shine!

Soot is very bold and has “Tortietude” as it’s called, it is very difficult to change her ways but she is very sweet and cuddly. She follows me into every room and runs a little hot, so she’s always snuggling up to me, Shine, or a cat bed to siphon some warmpth. She has a favorite mouse toy (above) she demands I throw many times a day, bringing it over to me like a dog.

I haven’t had a lap cat in ages, and Soot is 100% lap cat and Shine is the type that needs Love once every few days but is otherwise a bit standoffish. They’ve been helping me make the most of a rocky year, and they’re slowly settling in and calming down. I can finally sleep with my bedroom door open and they don’t wake me up…too often.

One of the things I’m trying to do productivity/mental health-wise is get more routines going and be more consistent. I could go on a whole blog post about just that, and maybe I will, but for now, please welcome Soot and Shine in the comments! (I’ll let them know it was you).

Welcome to The Zelda Zone!

Just a quick update for everyone, yes it’s still your favorite Gamer/Streamer/Guide-Writer/etc with a cute spikeball avatar. My name is now Zelda (she/her) and I’ve moved the website to a new URL, Zelda.Zone to better reflect that!

I still have lots of plans for the site and my video channels; I’m getting new OCs and supporting art made to make things a bit more Professional, and eventually a Vtuber live2D character for streaming! The transition has slowed down some other stuff but it’s definitely been worth it.

I’m still in the process of cleaning up the Old Name, so let me know if you spot it somewhere I can fix (I can’t edit old youtube videos), the site should be mostly working though a few things still need some updating or editing.

First time I can say New Year New Me I guess. Remember to VOTE by the way!

  • Zelda

zelda.zone In The Year 2024

2024, sounds so futuristic, doesn’t it? I’ve got some plans for this year and I figured what better day to post them. Not quite New Years Resolutions as I’ve started on most of these items at the end of 2023, but more how I’ll be focusing my work.

Ownership

The big things for me this year are quality and ownership. I’d like to get some proper custom emoji art and other supporting art for my videos and community, start selling some basic Merch, and upgrade my equipment where I can get the most bang for my buck.

I don’t make a ton online, but I make more than you might think; delightfully in that frustrating middle between “not worth caring about” and “actually viable to live on”. So I’ll be reinvesting where I can to keep my articles and videos up, and I even did some depressing Will writing to make sure my videos and articles are preserved in perpetuity. Hopefully.

As for ownership, 2023 saw the rise of the Fediverse which is honestly the first time I’ve been significantly positive about online spaces since web 2.0 siloed us up and sold us off for parts. The whole Twitter explosion made me rethink how much I depend on callous-to-evil corporate empires I have no control over or recourse from, so I’d like to host as much of my content on my own website that I can. It’s not easy doing that with 3000+ videos of relatively high bitrate and length…but I’m exploring my options and at least my short videos will be available on zelda.zone as well as YouTube.

More symbolically, I’m trying to call my videos “my videos” rather than “my youtube” and such. I make videos, I just happen to use YouTube. I’ve pulled back on many sites, but I’m still on Social Media on YouTube, Mastodon.Social, and Discord. I’m already looking for ways to self-host my mastodon presence and maybe set up a Matrix server that talks to my Discord so I have more ownership there.

The Website

Important for both quality and ownership is the physical specs of my site. I’ve already upgraded some critical infrastructure for zelda.zone around the end of last year, for the interest of completeness I’ll list the prices on my upgrades:

  • Domain Name ($10/year)
  • Cloudflare Pro Plan ($240/year)
  • Linode VPS Hosting, $24 a Month plan ($288/year)
  • Linode Backups $(60/year)

Mostly boring technical stuff, but the better Hosting and Cloudflare plans mean I can absorb a lot more traffic and have much less downtime. I also started a status page at status.zelda.zone with some nice uptime monitoring from Betterstack. I can already see that some minor, brief outages disappeared after the hosting upgrade!

Continue reading “zelda.zone In The Year 2024”

Seven Streams A-Streaming: A Holiday Week Of Streams

It’s the end of the year, and we’ve got one last week of streaming to make it count! For the holidays I’m taking a few days off, and as a result I’ll be free to do more streaming than usual. So I gave it a cute little name and I’m announcing Seven Streams A-Streaming, 7 mostly holiday or winter related streams! I’ll have a New Year’s announcement on this site too, so stay tuned.

All streams start 7PM Central and on my YouTube channel, unless otherwise noted.

Dec 24th: Christmas Games

Starting with the obvious, there’s several Christmas games I’ve meant to do for ages and never did. We’re fixing that on December 24th at 7 PM! It will be a random selection of mostly Flash Christmas games with some others thrown in there, and maybe a Mario Rom Hack or two.

Continue reading “Seven Streams A-Streaming: A Holiday Week Of Streams”

Zelda’s Spooktober Streams 2023

It’s that most special time of the year; October! And that means a Spooktober Streamathon is here. Jumpscare Horror games aren’t everyone’s thing, so my Halloween streams focus on more dream-like, surreal, and chilling games. Don’t expect too many jump scares or survival horror games, but more silly or strange games in the vein of Yume Nikki with more pumpkins and bats injected in there.

At 6 PM Central every Thursday and Friday of the month, we’ll be streaming! I’ve already planned out the first half of the month below with links straight to where you can find the stream. Come chat with us and get spooked!

Join our Discord, watch for updates on Mastodon, or follow me on YouTube to stay up-to-date. Can’t wait to get spooked? Check out the existing VODs from my 2021 and 2018 Spooktober stream-a-thons or my Lo-Fi Horror Game Playlist!

10/5: Halloween Flash Games

My favorite zombie, Flash, was never as dead as anyone says. We’ll be playing a collection of games straight from Archive.org that, indeed, you can play in your browser without Adobe Flash! Emulation, people, it’s a thing. A good one!

I haven’t spoiled myself on the games yet, but the Deep Sleep series is a fantastic set of unnerving point and click Flash games.

Continue reading “Zelda’s Spooktober Streams 2023”

Mastodon to Twitter Migration Guide – Tips & Tools

After what feels like a year of “will they won’t they”, Twitter is finally in the hands of America’s Least Mature Man—quite a competitive category. I set up my Mastodon ages ago just to see how it was, but now that I’m finally using it I’m really enjoying it.

This started as a Quick Start guide but ended up much more in depth than I thought. I sorted the headings from most to least important. Mastodon is “complicated”, but mostly in ways you don’t honestly need to worry about. Take your time and learn by doing and asking!

Feel free to share your tips and experiences with Mastodon in the comments below! Or say hi to @[email protected].

What The Hell Is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter alternative with individual servers operated by individuals or communities rather than a single corporation. The code is open-source and anyone can create an instance. As a result there is a consistent code base but not a “corporate mission” and the functionality is largely based on “pre-algorithm” Twitter.

The tl;dr is Mastodon is Twitter without a corporation or a glass-skinned manchild CEO. It costs nothing to try, so pop on a server and see if it’s for you. I’m writing a whole-ass article about it, but the best way is to learn by doing.

Most features Twitter has are on Mastodon, some slightly renamed. Lists, Direct Messages, Retweets (Boosts), Likes (Favorites), Hashtags, Notifications. Poke around and you’ll likely find more things familiar than foreign.

Pick a General Use Instance

Mastodon isn’t one site, it has Instances, sort of like Discord Servers. I’ll get into what that truly means in the later, more technical parts of the article. If you’re getting started, just load up the server list and find either a nice general server, or something specific to your interests. “Instance” and “Server” are interchangeable in Mastodon’s context.

Which instance you pick really doesn’t matter almost at all. I really recommend just making an account and poking around before you worry much about which server, as you can move servers later anyway. I personally recommend Mastodon.Social.

Continue reading “Mastodon to Twitter Migration Guide – Tips & Tools”

Best and Worst Jackbox Party Packs RANKED!

I don’t usually do Top X lists, but well, I’m something of a Jackbox player myself. With almost 50 streamed games of the series and counting, I thought I’d share some Opinions™. Deciding which game to pick up first can be a bit tricky, especially since they’re all priced about the same. Ready those Comment-Phasers below and let me know your hot takes!

I am rating these from a Streamer’s perspective so unstreamable games will not be treated gently. Note the (few) non-streamable games can be quite fun in local multiplayer. Each Pack has 5 different games, but I’m rating on the overall quality of the full set.

Now on to the rankings.

Continue reading “Best and Worst Jackbox Party Packs RANKED!”

Zelda’s Spooktober 2021 Stream Schedule

Are you prepared for CHILLS, THRILLS, and DILLS? Spooktober 2021 is here and Zelda has 8 bone-chillingly spooky streams ready for you! Check out the playlist below (the video watch page shows the time in YOUR timezone), or tune in on every Friday (4PM Central) and Saturday (6PM) in October!

We’ve got:

Spookware & Haunted PS1 Demo Disk (10/8)

Spookware is a Wario Ware game but SPOOKY, and the Haunted PS1 Demo Disk is a fantastic compilation of indie games with a PS1 horror vibe—my favorite! I probably won’t be able to catch ALL the PS1 demo disk games, so be on the lookout for surplus streams on sundays or weekdays!

Simpsons Treehouse of Horror YTP Collab Remastered (10/9)

Thanks to TheStreamLord, even our YouTube Poop watch party stream will be Spooktober-appropriate this year. This is a freshly remastered YTP collab of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes. Get ready to laugh AND scream!

Yume 2kki (10/15)

Yume Nikki fan games are a Halloween tradition on Zelda’s channel; just enough surrealness to be unnerving and odd, but not enough horror that the squeamish can’t enjoy! Join us for this dive back in probably the biggest Yume Nikki collaboration there is.

Jackbox Party Pack 8 (10/16)

Featuring the SCARIEST…okay we just do Jackbox nights in the Discord every first and third Saturday of every month. Feel free to join in and make it SPOOKY though.

Re:Kinder (10/22)

Can’t go wrong with a RPG Maker Horror game translated by VGPerson! They have consistently good taste. Thanks to Priere for the suggestion!

Fantasy Maiden’s Odd Hideout(10/23)

A great looking Japanese RPG Maker Horror game in a fantasy vibe this time! Thanks to CP49 for the suggestion!

Desert Nightmare (10/29)

Thanks to Priere for the suggestion again, this is a German RPG Maker Horror game, translated to English! Always good to have some diversity.

SPOOKTOBER MYSTERY STREAMS (10/30 & 10/31)

These bois are so scary I can’t even tell you what they are! And yes, we’re streaming on Halloween Day even though it’s a Sunday! Continuations of games I can’t finish in one stream may continue on Sundays as well.

Continue reading “Zelda’s Spooktober 2021 Stream Schedule”

YouTube Poop Submissions for Zelda Reaction Streams

Life comes at you fast, some days you think you’re normal, then here you are, making Reaction streams on YouTube. Anyway, I make YTP Reaction Streams on YouTube and if you want to see me share some great laughs with my audience, here’s how and where to send me stuff.

If you somehow got here without knowing what YouTube Poop means, you can only really understand by watching, I recommend checking out these Sonic ones.

[no_toc]

Ideally what I’m looking for is a 60-90 minute long YouTube playlist with just the best stuff in it, along with at least some form of theme. Here’s a good example from our Dr. Phil stream. That’ll result in a livestream of 90-120 minutes, which seems to be the best length for these bois.

YouTube Poop is a crapshoot (ha) and the problem is, I can’t really fake exaggerated reactions like most famous youtubers. If I have to watch stuff before hand to find what to stream, I won’t be able to really react to it live. That’s why submissions help so much!

Themes don’t have to be strict (you can slip some other good ones in there) but I like to be able to say “hey everyone we’re streaming King of the Hill YouTube Poops” so people have an idea what to expect.

Sometimes there are YTP collabs that are 30-60 minutes long on their own, if you know consistently good ones that add up to a stream on their own, you can just send those without a playlist I guess.

Submissions

Just make a YouTube playlist or email an existing on you think will suffice to [email protected], with any notes you may have, e.g. “there’s copyrighted music in this one,” “this one takes a while to get good” etc.

You can also reach out in my Discord or drop a YouTube comment.

YTP Reaction streams are usually done on Fridays or Saturdays, around 6 PM Central time. I like to do at least once a month.

Stuff To Avoid

Just a bunch of pointers for what doesn’t make the best streaming experience. In pretty much all of these, a small dose (just a few seconds of the video) is fine as long as the rest of the video makes up for it. But if a video’s humor is almost entirely derived from one of these categories, you probably shouldn’t include it.

Copyrighted Music

It’s hard to avoid in YTPs, but music in youtube’s Content ID system can really mess with the stream. If you can give a heads up for extended (over 5 seconds) periods of copyrighted music in a video it helps me mute the video during the stream, otherwise I have to edit it out of the VOD. And once, it took down the stream.

Racism/Bigotry/Slurs

Try not to include stuff where the only ‘funny’ part is a character saying the n-word or whatever. As with most things, a rare, actually funny inclusion that isn’t the sole thing in the video tends to be fine, like Hank Hill mowing his lawn set to Damn It Feel Good to Be a Gangsta.

Loud Noises, Flashing Lights, Screamers

If you can give a heads up as to which videos are particularly bad for flashing lights/ear destruction that helps, and try not to include things that are only ‘funny’ through use of these. I know these are basically unavoidable hence my warnings at the start of every YTP stream.

Politics

So from the PragerU reaction streams you know I don’t particularly shy away from political stuff but, once more, the focus should be on the humor. Unless it’s specifically PragerU/ToiletPaperUSA style humor which happens to work very well, either ask first or don’t include it. I don’t want to have to give live fact checks when I’m trying to laugh at Dr. Robotnik saying “I hope she made lots of DINNER, gay Luigi.”

Sos

Just kidding, Sos edits are always funny. Include more Sos.

Barely Edited Videos

These are both much less funny and much more likely to get me a Content ID claim.

Watch Zelda’s YouTube Poop Reaction Streams

Continue reading “YouTube Poop Submissions for Zelda Reaction Streams”

Are YouTube Shorts Worth Making? My Success With Shorts

YouTube Shorts were recently released publicly though still technically in Beta. The short-form looping videos are a very clear answer to TikTok (and the former Vine), providing very short videos of a minute or less to a vertical-only viewing experience designed just for Mobile, surfaced in a compact “watch a bunch at once” style experience.

If you haven’t messed with Shorts yet, the YouTube help article describes the technical aspects pretty well. I’ll focus more on how to use them and my experience with them and if they’re worth it. Note it’s very early stages so don’t draw too many conclusions, I’m still experimenting myself!

Have you started using YouTube Shorts? Share any tips or experiences in the comments below?

The YouTube Shorts Camera App

The Shorts Camera App seems to be the most direct answer to TikTok, including many features specifically for Shorts creation. However, it is only being tested in India for now, and users outside India will have to wait for the app to roll out worldwide.

YouTube Shorts Camera explanation

The features sound pretty good and will help notice users make Shorts without much/any editing work. The Shorts Camera is NOT required to upload shorts however, so you can upload them now even if you don’t have the app/live outside India.

Note that while the Shorts “experience” is only on Mobile, Shorts are still also a “normal” upload video that will appear like any other video to Desktop users. You get to have your cake and eat it too.

How To Make Your YouTube Video a Short

Even without the app, you can simply upload a vertically oriented (9:16 aspect ratio usually) video 60 seconds or less in length and include #Shorts in the description or title and the system will recognize it as a Short (though this doesn’t guarantee it will be featured as one).

Shorts are somewhat limited: Users can watch the Short, Comment, Like, Share, Subscribe, visit your channel or with a little effort, read the description. Many YouTube features like Chapters and even captions (!!) are currently unsupported, since when watching a Short from the Shorts slider, you get a different fullscreen interface instead of the usual watch page. No ads are shown in the Shorts experience, so a Shorts feature probably won’t raise your income directly—but subs are money too.

The lack of captions is particularly frustrating for accessibility reasons, plus many of us watching on phone leave our devices muted anyway. If your video completely depends on captions, I would bake them in for now. You also cannot tell what frame will be used as the “thumbnail” for Shorts—YouTube will use a frame from the video, not your normal thumbnail.

Expect inconsistency, new features for shorts etc, as the rollout is still technically a beta, so anything could change (or they could quietly nuke the project in a year as Google often does).

Where Do Users See Shorts?

Continue reading “Are YouTube Shorts Worth Making? My Success With Shorts”