Spore the Next Level: Rebirth, S1E13 Released!

 Since I've already wrapped up the major plot threads on Zhenauri that were left unfinished when I put the series on hiatus, it's time we get back to Dredd, which I still think is one of, if not the best setting that I've created in an adventure. Anyways, last time Zonn Tei got captured, so in this episode we get him back. Unfortunately for Jercy, it may not be all that straightforward...

Guess which Garadraed is the Glorious Leader. I dare you to.

Some tiny Roizelle scientists investigate the unknown object
that landed on Epindol a few episodes prior. 

A view of the Garadraed's intimidating navy, ready to attack the Kleekoonians.

Jercy in the midst of the Garadraed city, looking at the Orwellian
propaganda with his own eyes.

Spore the Next Level: Rebirth, S1E12 Released!

I'm not writing too much of an introductory blurb for this post. I'm emotionally exhausted after being verbally assaulted by fungus3 and dealing with his flamewar bullcrap, which incidentally is a symptom of being a toxic person along with portraying oneself as the victim. Anyways, pictures!

Yeah, you can probably guess what happens in this adventure.
I also had them crucify his sons, just so the royal bloodline
goes completely extinct like my respect for fungus3.

The Yakomo masses cheer at the demise of their hated king.
I was going to have them be in a crowd, but they decided to disobey me and scatter.
Truly members of an uprising.

The flag of the Yakomo Revolution. I know it looks like the
flag of Mexico, but shush. That place got blown up alongside the 
rest of Earth in the new canon.

Want to make your adventure stand out like this? Just press
Control + Shift + C, then type in "adventureLook -norainbows" sans quotes.

Spore the Next Level: Rebirth, S1E11 Released!

 

So in case you missed it, fungus3's barely-functional brain thought it would be a good idea to "reboot" STNL:R without me asking and incorporating elements from his equally dumb interactive series, This is War Redeclared. His attempt was so awful that I have officially brought the series out of hiatus to retcon this mistake out of the rebooted canon.

OK, to be honest I always wanted to resume production on the series after Revitalization started, since I remembered how they work and got to enjoy making new episodes like a kid again. As we all know, I have a bad track record of making two series at once, usually ditching new ones in favor of continuing STNL. This time, my goal is to work on STNL:R episodes while waiting for votes to come in for Revitalization. Anyways, we're continuing right on from Episode 10 (completely ignoring what happened in TIW:RD, of course), and returning to the Kleekoonian homeland of Zhenauri, where news of what's happened on Dredd has reached the masses...

The original placeholder thumbnail for the episode, taken way back in June 2018.
Yes, I've let this ferment on my hard drive for that long.

And here's the actual thumbnail you'll see. I know it looks like that of the
infamous TIW:RD episode, but shush.

The Yakomos finally get to reenact the French Revolution!

Ya know how Nero allegedly played the fiddle while Rome burned?
This is Omalie dancing as Kelamar descends into chaos.

An Epic Nepox got its foot stuck on one of the pickup trucks and went
for a ride. Such majestic but glitchy beasts.

Spore The Next Level: 7 Years and Counting (mostly)

Another year, another FORM A GROUP day! Although we did phase that curse out, so...

Anyways, it's hard to believe that it's already been a year since the last July 1st and my ultimately unfinished retrospective on the old series (which I may revisit if I get the time) and two years since the last anniversary for the old STNL and the epic Quinquennial special (which I'm still proud of).

Although I'm back into SPORE and more or less working on the next episode with eme12, I'm not nearly as motivated to do any special celebrations of either series. Having said that, however, I will do an obligatory retrospective for old time's sake. This year's retrospective will be things I like and dislike about being the creator of both STNLs and a member of the wider Revolution Universe. I know it isn't much, but it's the only thing I haven't done yet and the only thing I can motivate myself to do and finish.

I know this is a short post, so I'll fill it with a small teaser:

JERCY WILL BE ABLE TO JUMP AGAIN FOR NEXT TIME. YES.

Spore The Next Level: Rebirth, S1E10 Released!

Well, I certainly didn't expect to be doing one of these anytime soon.

It all started, of course, when eme12 finally reinstalled his copy of Spore, in the process getting rid of the crashes that'd prevented him from getting on and made him "miss being a kid". With my primary source of ideas and motivation back online, and a recent nostalgic desire of my own to get back into Spore, I've decided to continue the series for good; no more months-long hiatuses! I'm hoping to get one or two parts out a week to make up for my previous absences and move the story along at a reasonable pace, but that all depends on how real life pans out (boy, she is a harsh mistress).
This makes me really glad I didn't label the last episode as a series finale (which a cursory look at its comments will reveal that I did somewhat consider this) and that I left it open for me to continue at a later date. It turned out I really would!

Enough babbling explanation; let's talk about Episode 10! In this episode, we help Irzatta's rebellion strike the first blow against the oppressive Garadraeds and free some Roizelle slaves. Let's hope everything goes off without a hitch...

Jercy leads the Roizelle slaves to freedom, just like Moses.
(Also, there are supposed to me more slaves, but this is before
that was fully implemented).

The Roizelles languish in their slave pit, waiting for someone to
rescue them.

Did I mention just how huge the Garadraeds are? According
to Sporistics, they're 2.83 meters tall. That's about 9 feet 3 inches!

FALCON PAWNCH

Spore The Next Level: Rebirth, S1E9 Released!

What's this? A new STNL:R adventure?! No, you're not crazy; I decided I wanted to get this out to the world since it was sitting almost completed on my hard drive unshared for several months now. Consider it a lost episode, if you will. I still don't have the time to continue the series, and the fact that nobody's on doesn't help; I just wanted to put this out here for anyone interested (and by anyone, I mean Pokemonkab of course).

Anyways, in this short and sweet episode, Jercy gets diplomatic with Irzatta and the Roizelles so that they may stand together against the threat posed by the Garadraeds. Not much, but it's something.

This picture was originally just going to be a small preview image with
Irzatta's picture below as the adventure's thumbnail,
but I decided that this is so awesome that it HAD to be the main thumbnail.

Notice how the Kleekoonians look like midgets compared to Irzatta and other Garadraeds.
No wonder Jercy gets so intimidated...

Here we can see part of Dredd's food chain: a Dorce attacks a Talvin,
the Talvin is attacked by a Dusher, and finally a Varthan attacks the Dusher.

In the unnamed Roizelle city, a random civilian yawns in sheer boredom
(I think).

Spore the Next Level Retrospective: The Could've Been Better

Here we are onto Part 2 of this belated series, where I look back at the past 6 years and decide what's been great, what could've been better, and WHY OH WHY DID I DO THAT CRAP. As you might be able to guess, this part will focus on aspects that could've been better and in what ways. Note that this will be only for the old series, though some of these issues have been or will be resolved in Rebirth.

The unused logo/title card for the
special. 

1. The Zombie Arc: You might be asking "What zombie arc?", and for a good reason: it never happened! The Zombie Arc was a massive story arc thought up be eme12 and myself for our respective series of Badass and STNL². Here, the zombie virus introduced in that series would spread to several planets thanks to the efforts of an insane and supersized Natas. Epindol would've been one of those planets, and Jercy would help a small band of survivors and crewmembers fight off both the infected and rival teams. Has this arc been allowed to be, it would've made STNL² great again with such things as the deaths of several characters (including Zeela and Tressha... more on those two in a bit), the introduction of a Tyleturantula character named Jelima W'Hels with an interesting development, and several lingering effects that would reshape the politics of STNL's region of the galaxy. Originally scheduled for 2015, the SPORE Maintenance of Doom™ put a wrench through those plans and delayed it. While I help out hope in early 2016 that it could be done, everything changed when eme12 cancelled Badass just as the stage was getting set for the arc; afterwards, STNL² was left to linger until we put it out of its misery on Christmas. Perhaps the new leaf of the reboot will make things different...
2. Zeela Vordav: Originally meant to fill a void once occupied by She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Zeela somehow grew on me (because she's hot) and I decided to take her a bit further by making her Jercy's love interest. Over time, however, my like for her and her sister Tressha slowly disappeared, and now I feel her arc was rather "meh". It does seem rather odd for a space mermaid (while on the topic, her "I'm not a mermaid" running joke was fun at first, but then got old) to fall in love with a green monkey-creature with bulging eyes and arms misplaced on his head to start off with, and Cannabeth would've made a more established and logical love interest, since they were supposedly involved already (why'd I forget?!) and they're both of the same species. Looking back on it now, I probably should've had Cannabeth die earlier on (since she was never interesting) and have Zeela come in and start helping Jercy get over his loss. While Zeela will be among the old characters returning in the reboot, expect her development and romance to be more interesting.
3. Siranians: Zeela's race are also something I never was quite happy with. The concept of an ancient race of mermaids who long ago visited Earth is certainly an interesting one, but for various reasons was never made that interesting in the series. Perhaps it's due to Spore's limits on depicting ancient technology and ruins, or perhaps it's just my lack of experience at the time, but I feel they eventually ended up seeming like just another race and not one special in any way. Their culture wasn't given much thought either, and it seemed odd that they'd just use their alluring songs on passersby for fun and sport. To be fair, I don't think the Sirens of Greek mythology were elaborated on either, so I didn't have a lot to work with. Their sister species, the Suckulants, were also never interesting either, but their existence is fungus3's fault. Finally, their unusually human appearance was an anomaly, even more so because it wasn't even discussed. These days, I've put some more thought into their culture and history, especially since the Fallen Empires of Stellaris have been providing me some inspiration. When the Siranians return in Rebirth, they won't be just another race in the galaxy...
4. Kleekoonanonis: As many of you know, the Kleekoonanonis turned out both ugly and boring.

   

   Compared to the Kleekoonians we have now, these guys look noobish...

   They were ugly because of the most well-known blunder I ever made in creature design: putting their arms on their heads. Not only did it look silly, it also made the Kleekoonanonis look highly unrealistic even by SPORE standards. Their culture wasn't much better; it turned out to be highly bland and uninteresting, with a rather uninspired and straightfoward democracy that was too rooted in the real world and not imaginative enough. Worst of all was their bizarre naming scheme that came about due to laziness; had I simply mashed the random button, I could've come up with something okay. But no, I had to lazily jumble the first letters of real-world names and leave it at that. Not only was it dumb, it also made adding and naming family members (such as Jercy's seldom-seen brother and Lobert's child) weird and unnecessarily complicated. Their sole redeeming value is the FORM A GROUP curse that was entertaining for a while, as well as their popularity as interactive series protagonists. Also, their backstory with the Kraygans was somewhat interesting, even For the reboot, all of these problems are no more: The Kleekoonanonis (now Kleekoonians) have an improved appearance, we at least got to decide their culture (even if it turned out like the original, but oh well), and their names are suitably alien and different (except for Jercy and Zeerois; they were fine to begin with).
5. Jercy Packson: While on the subject of Kleekoonanonis, let's take a moment to discuss the most notable of these, Jercy Packson. I feel that I should've developed him more and put him through more stress than he ultimately ended up experiencing. Other than the end of Bloodlust, he didn't go through a lot of experiences that ended up changing him and his personality for better or worse. He was also pretty bland before then; unable and possibly unwilling to break from the cliched mold of a generic starship captain in charge of a crew. Afterwards, he turned into a much more interesting Nemletneg-hating maniac prone to instability. I probably won't do that for the reboot (since his opinions were mine to an extent; today I think the Nemletnegs would be more interesting if they weren't all like fungus3's bimbos), but expect Jercy to be a different character in STNL:R's final season (whenever that is). 
6. The Experimenters: I feel the Experimenters had potential to be great, but weren't for various reasons. Sure, they were a pastiche of Star Trek: DS9's Dominion and simply there to explain the OPness of the Garadreads (which will be hopefully toned down for the reboot), but they certainly were an interesting concept. Their usage of genetic engineering set them apart, and had fungus3 not decided to kill them off (though I did almost decide to undo it), they could've been used as an allegory on our current debates with such technology (for the record, I'm okay with it as long as it isn't used to make KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN a thing). Although the Experimenters won't be in the reboot due to changes to the Garadraed backstory and the nerfing of their intelligence, I might make a species with similar usage of genetic engineering. 
7. Humans: I've never been happy with how humanity has been depicted in the original series; they were a rather odd mish-mash of Star Trek's utopian ideals with our current-day politics and ethos. In addition, there's the whole alternate history and retconning that ended up causing more problems than it solved for STNL²'s last days. Finally, it never made sense why they'd colonize Epindol despite them apparently knowing sapient life was already there. I wish I'd had a more concrete backstory and vision for our future in the Revolution universe. Thankfully, exactly this will be in the reboot, though I don't think I can exactly say what they're like and what their motives are...
8. Khrelan Galagat: She may have one of the best names of any STNL character (according to eme12, who's been known to say her name out loud to bug people), but I was never quite happy with some parts of how she was handled. The idea of her being an Eftievirus shapeshifter was interesting, but was rarely used due to various limits with SPORE and complexity. As I recall, it was explained that shapeshifting tired her out, which was okay but rather uncreative. I also think her backstory and the "mystery" of her existence could've been handled a bit better, especially since it tied into the abysmal Gavalantari/[CENSORED] thing early on in STNL². If I were to do it again, I'd tone down her enigmatic-ness and make her a bit more straightforward, and maybe not even make her a shapeshifter. Thankfully, I'm going to do just that in the reboot.

This is only a very small selection of things I felt could've been improved throughout the original run of STNL and STNL². It was actually pretty hard narrowing down the list since there's a lot that could've been better, including my handling of characters and developing them. In the next part of this series (whenever that is), we delve into forbidden knowledge from early STNL and ask ourselves, "WHY DID YOU DO DAT WILLIEZK?!"