Jason Thor Hall / PirateSoftware / Maldavius Figtree / DarkSphere Creations / Maldavius / Thorwich / Witness X / @PotatoSec - Incompetent Furry Programmer, Blizzard Nepo Baby, Lies about almost every thing in his life, Industry Shill, Carried by his father, Hate boner against Ross Scott of Accursed Farms, False Flagger

[Kheapathic]

*binds quicksave to the spacebar*

World's most normal X-Com player.

 

[Hooked on phobics]

World's most normal X-Com player.

Particularly if you mean oldcom with openxcom and x-com UFO defense (I assume you do due to the hyphen), I am absolutely sure he doesn't play oldcom. Oldcom is like a psychotic girlfriend who strokes your ego and then kicks you in the fucking nuts, and then tells you you got shit to do as you are recovering from buckling over.

Jason DOES NOT have the emotional maturity for that game, especially on a credible difficulty.

 

[Retink Retunk]

For some reason every video game streamer at one point in their life decides to start up a company with another streamer and it inevitably goes to shit. Offbrand games is one of those companies and he started it with Ludwig. He calls himself the Director of Strategy or some other made up title that he used to position himself as a marketable person of authority.

Each streamer assumes the other isn't bullshitting about their business knowledge and can actually handle running a business. This has never worked out as a result.

 

[Aidan]

*binds quicksave to the spacebar*

World's most normal X-Com player.

I'd attempt to watch him play OpenXCOM. I don't think Mald can adhere to the idea of "losing is fun!"

 

[Pipi420]

He calls himself the Director of Strategy

Holy fuck that is the most fake job ass title I've ever heard in my entire life I'm actually blown away.

 

[GhaeicSD]

As I was writing this @Hooked on phobics did something similar to what you're about to read here. The hivemind is real and currently wants Mald to suffer endless effortposts, I guess.

Recently I've been isolated from my main PC, so I've been replaying a few RPGs on emulators from when I was younger to see how they hold up now that I'm older and have a better grasp on what makes a game good or bad. As I have been doing so, it really put into perspective just how terribly flawed Heartbound is not just on a large scale, but also in all the small ways that matter, as if it's simply wearing a real RPG's skinsuit. Because I like tearing Mald's game to shreds and think a-logging him through his "magnum opus" is the funniest part of this thread, I decided to do a direct comparison between Heartbound and one of the RPGs I replayed to showcase some shitty things I haven't really seen expanded on all too much.

My choice for the comparison was between two games, Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DQ9 from now on) and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Each of these games are apt comparisons to Heartbound in many ways, but ultimately I settled on choosing DQ9 for the following reasons:

• Strange Journey is a much more intense, mature game focusing on abstract concepts and moral relativism, whereas Heartbound and DQ9 are pitched as family-friendly with clear messages. This isn't inherently a boon or issue with any of these games, but I think it's more fair to compare games that are intended for a similar audience.
• While the story structure of Strange Journey is more in-line with Heartbound's storytelling method, with multiple paths depending on your choices through the game, DQ9's actual storyline is more akin to Heartbound's. This will be expanded on later.
• Strange Journey's gameplay (and frankly SMT as a whole) blows a majority of RPGs out of the water. I find that it would be completely bad faith to compare Strange Journey to Heartbound, as hilarious as it would be.

So, my choice for comparison is DQ9, a Nintendo DS game made by Square Enix and released in 2009. There may still be some criticism for this comparison. I will preemptively address this in the next section. Out of consideration for other readers, I've spoilered each section to make them into dropdowns. Each section is for the most part isolated from one another, so feel free to skip sections you don't care about.

An Unfair Comparison?

Spoiler: Dropdown

While comparing an indie game to "the RPG series", the one that started it all, is unfair on the surface, there isn't so much of a difference when you look at it with any level of scrutiny. While you can argue that there is a discrepancy in team size or budget, you have to account for the scale of the production, as well as what was delivered in their development timeframe.

DQ9 was a project intended to utilize the DS to it's fullest capacity in every way possible, with full 3D graphics, a 30-50 hour campaign, almost 200 side quests, a postgame with stronger bosses and randomly generated dungeons, local multiplayer with 4 people, and online events, Heartbound on the other hand is a completely enclosed, single player experience meant to tell a story in an efficient and immersive manner, probably not even reaching the 15 hour mark when all is said and done. That being said, we have to compare what we currently have, and Heartbound at the moment is a 2 hour nothing-burger with a single enemy to "fight", a few non-puzzles, and 1.98 areas to see, if we're to believe Mald's words regarding his development progress.

Fun fact: Heartbound (according to it's own system requirements) and DQ9 (based on the maximum storage space of a DS cartridge), both take the same amount of space: 512MB. There isn't any excuse for the game to be this barebones when it takes up as much space as a full length RPG released just before the year 2010. This might sound bad, since Heartbound is still in the condition after 7 years of development, but how much time did DQ9 take to make?

Seeing as DQ9 released in 2009, and the console it was developed for had only existed since 2005, that leaves a maximum of 4 years to deliver what may be the single most ambitious and content rich game on the DS to ever release. Adding on how the developers have cited Oblivion as a major influence on the game's concept, that range can realistically be reduced further to 3 years. DQ9's development cycle was likely less than half of what Heartbound's currently is, with that gap continuing to widen as time rolls on. That's not even taking into account how quick and easy Mald's dev tools are to use compared to 2005-9 Squeenix's. How embarrassing.

Development costs are not a factor either, at the end of the day, thanks to Mald's fat mouth and inflated ego betraying his "humble beginnings". He can bitch and moan all he wants about how hard it is being a solo dev, but the truth is that he's a multimillionaire streamer with endless access to nepotistic industry connections, who has hired a double-digit number of jannies, commissioned artists and musicians, runs a ferret Gehenna sanctuary with it's own staff he payrolls, and has virtually no time restrictions or commitments beyond those he sets himself. Realistically, when factoring in project scale, he has more resources available to make his vision reality than DQ9's team did and squanders all of them. Oh, and DQ9's team actually earned their status and budget by releasing 8 successful titles in the same series over the course of 20 years. Does that amount of time look familiar? Mald has NO EXCUSE. Now with all that out of the way, time to actually compare the games.

Story

Spoiler: Dropdown

When boiled down to it's core essence, DQ9 and Heartbound are telling the same story in different ways. The protagonist suffers a terrible tragedy, loses something of importance to them, and sets off to far away, unfamiliar lands to retrieve it.

In Heartbound, Lore loses his dog Baron to an alien eldritch thing named Barghest, then gets whisked away and has to traverse the Dark World to find Baron again.

In DQ9, the player is an angelic being called a Celestrian, whose purpose is to help mortal humans with their issues to produce Benevolessence, raw gratitude in crystal form. They then offer this Benevolessence to the Tree of Life, the Yggdrasil, in worship of the Almighty. Shortly after the player is assigned his territory to assist, a great calamity strikes the Celestrians' home, nearly destroying it and sending countless Celestrians to the Earth, including the player, who also loses his wings and halo during the fall. The remainder of the game involves the player trying to regain their Celestrian nature by continuing to assist mortals.

Notice how detailed DQ9's story pitch is compared to Heartbound? That's not intentional, I attempted to be as thorough for Heartbound as I did for DQ9. There truly is no substance to Heartbound's story. You want to know the funniest part? Both of these intro sections are about the same length if you aren't intentionally wasting time. The amount of story found solely in the intro to DQ9 is more than you will find in the entirety of Heartbound, and you aren't even out of the tutorial yet. What a fatal flaw for a supposedly "story focused" RPG.

The tone of the games are also vastly different, with Heartbound taking a much more melodramatic, whiny tone compared to DQ9. The most egregious example of this is that office segment in The Tower, which is pretty much just Mald bitching about working at Blizzard. I don't have an issue with a degree of self-insertion in a story, quite the opposite, actually. I find that is the only chance anyone has to create a true masterpiece is to form it's identity using pieces of the author, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings being heavily inspired by his own life experiences. Mald however, manages to do everything completely incorrectly, by displaying his life of opportunity and privilege as one of misery and woe. Above all else, it reveals his ingratitude, snobbishness, and inconsideration for others in lieu of telling a story.

Ironically, a major theme of DQ9 is elitism, with mortals being directly subservient to Celestrians, and Celestrians themselves being subject to an immutable caste system. In contrast, it is much more sympathetic to people of all stock and covers a wide range of issues during the Fygg questline including the death of loved ones, exploitation, vanity, isolation, and disingenuity, among others. No one is inherently "bad" in the game, they become so through their circumstances. The stories are shorter and simpler than most, and not all of them have a happy ending, but what all of them do is serve to demonstrate the other core theme of the game; accepting your place in life, and working to make that place better for yourself and everyone else in it...and isn't that just the perfect, almost poetic foil to Mald's pity party?

Gameplay

Spoiler: Dropdown

What gameplay is there to talk about? Heartbound has a few pushing puzzles and laser beam puzzles, but it's mostly just walking around with nothing else to it. There is a single fight in Heartbound against Barghest that is repeated twice, and you can't even lose the first round. It involves 4 minigames: a pinball minigame where you bat a fireball back and forth, clicking falling rocks, Simon Says where you click the eyes in order, and a timing minigame, if that even counts. The fighting system is schizophrenic from having to switch between keyboard and mouse, and even just watching it feels...off...compared to any typical RPG. There is no more variety beyond that. It's obvious the focus is the characters and story, which only serves to exaggerate their problems further.

As for DQ9? This is what a midgame boss fight looks like.

I can provide some context to what's happening here.

DQ9 is a very simple turn based game at a glance, you just give commands and watch the turn play out. As you get stronger and complete side quests, however, options open up vastly compared to most other entries in the series. The are 6 default and 6 unlockable vocations, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some examples include:

• The Minstrel, who can buff their own dodge chance while mimicking any other playstyle on the fly.
• The Sage, a powerful glass cannon who can heal the party and attack with an endless reserve of MP.
• The Gladiator, who intentionally restricts their MP usage and takes damage to become the naturally strongest fighter in the game.
• The Martial Artist, who can raise their own Tension to multiply the damage they deal.
• The Paladin, who can direct all damage to themselves while healing and buffing the rest of the party.

Your party can be any combination of these vocations, at no cost to change them, with skills being transferred between them freely. This makes any combination of party members not only possible, but unique based on their past vocations, and makes nearly any composition viable. Furthermore, each weapon type has their own skill tree, allowing weapon expertise to also carry between classes, with the final unlock allowing the use of that weapon type on any class. If you put in the work, you can have a Mage wielding a hammer, or a Warrior with a whip. This achieves something that Mald has thus far built Heartbound on, and failed to deliver: a game where every choice will have effects in the future, and where the player has the freedom to make the story and characters their own. Once again, how ironic.

Character Design

Spoiler: Dropdown

The character design for Heartbound is, much like most other aspects of it, uninspired and forgettable. There aren't many direct comparisons that I can make for several reasons. The biggest reason is a lack of apt examples, since a majority of Heartbound's characters are anthropomorphic animals, and DQ9's are humans. There is also a wide gap between the amount of antagonists in Heartbound versus DQ9, extending into the multiple dozens. I do however, have 3 good examples that show the failure that is Heartbound's character design.

Past the halfway point of DQ9 you are introduced to the Triumgorate, who are former humans twisted into animal form by an evil influence who will remain unnamed to avoid spoilers. These are the only 3 anthropomorphic characters in the entire game, and this is how they are portrayed:


Shifting to Heartbound, the Animus world is a village of anthropomorphic animals. Yes, this is the same Animus that is 98% complete. Allow me to show you how some of the villagers look before continuing:

Forgoing any sort of comparisons between the quality of the art (which is, admittedly, decent), these designs are awful for one solitary reason: there is no way to tell what a character's personality is like at a glance, or alternatively, the designs themselves have no character.

Take a look at the Triumgorate once again, and lets play a little game:
First assign one of the following names to each of them: Goresby-Purrvis, Goreham-Hogg, Hootingham-Gore.
Then, assign one of these pairs of words to each of them: Haughty and Boastful, Controlling and Deceitful, Stoic and Collected
Answers: The Pig: Goreham-Hogg, Haughty and Boastful, The Owl: Hootingham-Gore, Controlling and Deceitful, The Leopard: Goresby-Purrvis, Stoic and Collected

You could most likely immediately assign the correct traits and names without blinking an eye. In fact, you probably subconsiously knew before I even laid their personalities out. That is masterful character design, as expected from someone with decades of experience. Goreham-Hogg's extravagant armor and open stance emits pride, Hootingham-Gore's eerily human face wears his treachery and intelligence, and Goresby-Purrvis' flowing fur cloak and wide-bottom pants is reminiscent of a skilled and unshakable shogun.

Now lets do the same for the Villagers:
Names: Rhode, Ramul, Fern
Personalities: Confident but secretly Anxious, Gossiper, Intelligent
Answers: The Deer: Fern, Confident but secretly Anxious, The Cougar: Rhode, Gossiper, The Rabbit: Ramul, Intelligent

Probably not so easy, right? In fact, I'd reckon you probably got at least two wrong, and if you did get them all right, you'd have trouble justifying it. That's the tell of a terrible design, and when all of your characters look equally unremarkable, you can easily assign any traits you want to them and be equally correct. Not to mention, these personalities are much more one dimensional than the Triumgorates', who despite their exaggerated main traits, have depth, complexity, and even a small amount of overlap to reinforce their allegiance and formerly human nature.

Even their clothing is boring, only consisting of a single "flare" piece like a bandana or wreath with the rest either solid colors or nothing at all. Notice the clashing golds, purples, and cyans on the Triumgorate, and all the small details like Goreham-Hogg's white leg tattoos and belt styled like a champion belt, or Goresby-Purrvis' single earring and leather straps holding his cloak in place over his armor that makes them inherently interesting to look at. It's the little things that tell a character's story, and Heartbound has none of that. If it isn't in your face, it isn't there at all.

No point in beating around the bush; these characters exist solely to farm furry fan art (porn) to try to push the game to a massive, consumerist audience. There's no heart, no soul, no purpose to these characters beyond that. Read through the wiki page as I have done, and you'll see the only things that I cut out of their bios was their jobs (which isn't a personality) and their sexuality which, surprise-surprise, out of the 3 I randomly chose, 2 were gay. WhAt ArE tHe OdDs?

The worst part about this is that Mald is almost certainly going to tell, not show, their personalities, which is a horrible waste of the player's time. Small changes to these characters could pay dividends, and Mald has countless examples to take notes from all over the place. Alas, we all know he won't, because he's an uninspired failure.

No, I don't. So I'll conclude by simply stating that there are plenty of games that already did what Mald is doing, better and with more ambition, in less time, and under more strenuous conditions than Mald has ever experienced in his stupid life. If you did read all of that, you're probably just as autistic as I am and would probably enjoy DQ9, so give it a shot if it sounded interesting. Thank you for coming to my TedTALK, I hope to see more people shit all over Mald's game in the future.

 

[LGTV]

Recent Discord announcement from Maldy.

Got the results back from the excised Lymph Node from Ghost.
The vet put it in as an emergency order to see if we could get it back in time for her.
We did not get it in time but the results show it wouldn't have mattered.

Ghost had Hodgkin-like lymphoma.
This kind of cancer is rare and extremely aggressive.
It brought her from healthy to dead in about two weeks.
It started around her heart and lungs which complicated things further.
There was nothing we could have done to treat it in that time.

Edit: Sorry for the pics being so large, I keep trying to make them smaller but it's not saving my changes correctly.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

The fact he is keeping these ferrets alive on expensive medicine seems more cruel than just euthanasia.

 

[I mean I'm just saying]

The fact he is keeping these ferrets alive on expensive medicine seems more cruel than just euthanasia.

I'm no expert in animal shelters, but to me this is yet another aspect that reeks of Jason treating these ferrets as pets instead of shelter animals. I can understand going these lengths for a beloved family dog, but not for rescue ferret #52.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

I'm no expert in animal shelters, but to me this is yet another aspect that reeks of Jason treating these ferrets as pets instead of shelter animals. I can understand going these lengths for a beloved family dog, but not for rescue ferret #52.

You'd think a shelter / sanctuary's goal is to provide comfort and care. When an animal is beyond normal comfort it should be euthanized. There's no saving it, there's no benefit to prolonging its suffering. It reeks of emotional attachment beyond that of a caretaker for animals and into the realm of an owner.
I'm talking out my ass though I don't run a shelter, but it just seems very unprofessional.

 

[MercuryMan]

You'd think a shelter / sanctuary's goal is to provide comfort and care. When an animal is beyond normal comfort it should be euthanized. There's no saving it, there's no benefit to prolonging its suffering. It reeks of emotional attachment beyond that of a caretaker for animals and into the realm of an owner.
I'm talking out my ass though I don't run a shelter, but it just seems very unprofessional.

What are the standards of an actual ferret rescue? Are they supposed to be dying on an almost monthly basis?

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

What are the standards of an actual ferret rescue? Are they supposed to be dying on an almost monthly basis?

Good question

I decided to google
https://www.gcfa.com/

The first thing I noticed when looking into this site they look to rehouse.
30 years experience over 8,000 ferrets. So if they're to be believed they definitely have some experience.
Also a 501c3.

I can't find any lists about their turnover but it shows currently they have 98 ferrets in the census currently with at least 6 listed as adoptable.
There also appears to be more you can ask about in a contact.

No real info about their care for ferrets that have terminal illnesses though.

 

[Nothing Is Written]

There truly is no substance to Heartbound's story.

It's a half baked self-insert conceived out of a depressive state that he's emotionally matured out of. Every time he opens the game, it he's revisiting 'Nam.

The tone of the games are also vastly different, with Heartbound taking a much more melodramatic, whiny tone compared to DQ9. The most egregious example of this is that office segment in The Tower, which is pretty much just Mald bitching about working at Blizzard.

I hate this so much. I don't know how reliably we can say it's analogous to his work at Blizzard but it's a hamfisted blatant lecture on the tired old trope of "work bad, offices are for robots, rules bad, I'm out of place". Angsty teen writing made manifest in a visually uninspired slogfest.

such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings being heavily inspired by his own life experiences

I'm nitpicking here, but Tolkien was inspired by the lack of English folklore published at the time, and drew enormous amounts of lore from Nordic tales, Beowulf, and his Catholic faith.

The fighting system is schizophrenic from having to switch between keyboard and mouse, and even just watching it feels...off...compared to any typical RPG. There is no more variety beyond that.

I watched all available fights and games currently in the main build, and it's a hodgepodge of Warioware bullshit that looks and feels like Newgrounds flash games. The animations are atrocious.

there is no way to tell what a character's personality is like at a glance, or alternatively, the designs themselves have no character.

I worked with the TF2 team briefly in the late 2000s and silhouetting was a critically important design choice for differentiating between characters. You're spot on: they're furry mugshots with a cartoonish smile.

No point in beating around the bush; these characters exist solely to farm furry fan art (porn) to try to push the game to a massive, consumerist audience. There's no heart, no soul, no purpose to these characters beyond that. Read through the wiki page as I have done, and you'll see the only things that I cut out of their bios was their jobs (which isn't a personality) and their sexuality which, surprise-surprise, out of the 3 I randomly chose, 2 were gay. WhAt ArE tHe OdDs?

I fucking I hate I know this now.

The worst part about this is that Mald is almost certainly going to tell, not show

His modus operandi is pontificating about himself. Heartbound being about himself, he can't resist to TELL the player. There's no nuance.

Your effort post is appreciated but you're expecting too much of an emotionally stunted child monetising his teenage years. You're comparing a child's art project to a project of art for children.

 

[potato sack]

calling it a sanctuary is actually more genuine than a rescue but i dont think maldy has the moral backbone to rename the thing his misnamed into the correct one

 

[Scorpion From MK]

Clips where Jason talks about the 4chan hack:

7:36:09-7:37:36

A chatter asks Jason what he thinks of the 4chan hack and Jason responds by saying that he didn't know at first if it was a hack or not. He goes on to name drop The Sharty and explains how they brought back the /qa/ board which was filed with old school memes. Furthermore, Jason reminisces about how 4chan was people posting stupid memes and laments that 4chan turned into "serious business".

14:21-22:26
23:42-24:28

Jason explains the 4chan hack in more detail.

Jason encourages his audience to apply critical thinking when seeing bombastic stories.

Spoiler: Clips where Jason seethes about LSF

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Jason encourages his audience to apply critical thinking when seeing bombastic stories.

Really now? Thankfully he has no bombastic stories in his 20+ years of experiences as master hacker coder and sole reason for blizzard's success.

 

[cigint]

Clips where Jason talks about the 4chan hack:

The duality of Jason -- he's simultaneously above all these communities and finds them utterly disgusting and hopeless, but also he's one of the oldest and most influential members in all of them and has been around them all for years, if not decades.

 

[Vibe_Guy]

calling it a sanctuary is actually more genuine than a rescue but i dont think maldy has the moral backbone to rename the thing his misnamed into the correct one

It has to do with legality not morality.
Detailed Discussion of the Laws Regulating Rescue and Foster Care Programs for Companion Animals

Spoiler: ferrets are legally companion animals

source

Sanctuary is a synonym for shelter. And he is not running an animal shelter, but a rescue (legally)

Basically as not to overcomplicate it: there are different sets of rights and regulations for the 4 categories.

 

[Roachbound]

Spoiler: Clips where Jason seethes about LSF

View attachment 7295474

He's lying once again, the whole puzzle only took him 20 minutes and not an hour because he looked at chat.

First time seeing the puzzle(original source from mald) 8:08-8:28

Spoiler: His chat literally googled "gallery puzzle" then spoiled the answer.

Also, look at how his mod felix is saying "no hints" while refusing to listen to demands to put emote only mode on(possibly cause they were the ones helping on alts). He is such a fraud.

He has started to credit chat, but considering that chat is literally solving every single puzzle for him, they're still under acknowledged by mr streamer. And when pressed, he gives a lie like above. Mald has not changed at all, which isn't a surprise since literally every single incident(2ndlife, eve, skg, wow, dmca debacle, fraud) comes from him never changing his ways.

 

[Nothing Is Written]

And when pressed, he gives a lie like above.

Sure, bud. Tell me more about that in your unban request.

Insane behaviour dude.