During the video premier, enough people logged on that we actually broke the player peak record: twitter.com/JoshStrifeHayes/status/1670156752170393600
If U want a cursed mmo, try project gorgon. The developer is a diehard trump fan, and if u mention anything negative about trump in global chat, u get an instant permaban. It also has something like 90% upvotes, enjoy the curse.
@@undertyped1 To be fair, I don't think a developer's political opinions necessarily make a MMO or any game bad, but it's unfortunate if they let that influence their moderation decisions.
Hey! Tarpit here, one of two Animyst devs. This weekend has been surreal! We had moved on creatively years ago, taking a huge amount from the experience of making Animyst, and contentedly assuming that a very few people would ever go into the world. Our pre-Josh upper limit was 14 players on a PvP event (going back to 2018.) The game is designed and balanced for an average of 5-10 players constantly, a number that still ended up being overly ambitious for us to attain. Josh was absolutely right pointing out that a multiplayer game without a community literally never gets experienced, no matter how good (or scuffed.) All that to say, we are so thrilled that people are playing Animyst! We both adore the video. Writing this on the Monday after it dropped, we have patched 6 times since the video came out. (All of the glory for that goes to Ded; I made the game worlds but can't assist with programming labor) Lag, and other issues resulting from these hitherto unseen server loads are much better than they were feeling Saturday. The game is built for group PvP, and we will keep turning the screws on networking and optimizations to make that as possible as possible. Neither of us thought we would ever update again. We are still disoriented and need to think deeply about what the future holds. Josh, you made instant fans out of the both of us. The video is hilarious, awesomely done, and perhaps overly generous.
@@Telepathic_Snail_Overlords thanks a ton! It is not the most optimized game of all times so even people with good rigs aren't performing like they should
The tab thing really does make part of the text, doesn't it? Anyway, I will call some friends and try to play it, my morbid curiosity got the better of me
I cannot believe I am saying this about a game that shows up in this series, but I think this games has massive potential. It's creepy, intended or not, and honestly, I'd love to see more out of it.
I actually like the voicelines, it feels so wrong and raw exactly what you would expect from someone who has been dead for 10.000 years. It adds to the uncomfortable atmosphere
Samies. It was so damn weird it made me think of that one twisted MMO Josh did the series on. It definitely set the mood and made it so much more creepy than what an actual voice actor could have done.
@@amixofgeekcontent This is how I found Josh way back when. There was something about it that seemed similar to dot hack, an incredibly in-depth reviewer who outlined his time with the story, characters, and a legitimate enthusiasm that didn't feel forced or self-absorbed. I remember reading a comment at the time where some one was complaining "You should put these into 15 minute chunks. You don't have the charisma and the game isn't interesting enough to be given this much time. If you do fix your style I could recommend you to..." And so on and so forth. Oh, it was so nice to see how quickly Josh's channel grew, and how varied his wheelhouse really became.
Started playing the game right after the video was posted. Managed to gather all 8 pages in about 6-8 hours. Now the real grind begins! The 2 guys who made the game were actively in the game communicating to players, answering questions, replacing items lost by server resets, and just general being cool dudes. They’ve dropped at least 2 performance patches in the 48 hours since the population has boomed. Super awesome to be a part of!
Even if this game doesn’t really go anywhere, the new players gave these 2 guys motivation and a spark. This game may not be it, but maybe the next attempt they will carry that spark with them to something amazing. They clearly have a passion!
90% sure this game's dev had glimpsed beyond the veil and was compelled to create it after witnessing the eldritch truth underneath and enveloping our reality
They have seen beyond the veil, a horrific truth, they found it there and in that moment of brainblasting realization they ceased to be man.. and become a herald.. an avatar of the crawling chaos..
Out of all MMOs he reviewed, this one is the anti-thesis of the usual aftermath. Instead of shutting down a dying game for good, he breathed life into it.
Just so you know, this video almost singlehandedly brought this game back from the dead. After watching, I downloaded it and played and we had about 60 players on the server. It got enough attention that the two devs who made the game even pushed out a new update to help with the lag that having that many people on the server caused. This game is awesome and now that there are a few people playing, it's one I'd recommend people actually look at.
As of 7 PM/19:00 on June 18 2023, Steamcharts says it has 61 people. Because of the surreal and empty yet disturbingly interesting potential this game has, I hope this game actually is carried by these people.
@@EJ_Red there is a fair chance it will, since they are a lot more prepared for the game, after this video, than if they had stumbled upon it randomly on steam.
Josh Strife Hayes is officially not the MMO Grim Reaper, but the MMO Necromancer. He commands them to die and to raise from their graves in equal measure.
I'm not sure how the game's servers worked, but it simply could have been a server hosted on the dev's own computer. They said themselves it was never supposed to have tons of players, so that would be a relatively low-cost method of keeping the server up
If anyone is curious, that jittery effect on the weapons is floating point error. Towards the end of the video you can see a lot of jittering. Basically the player character is so far from the center of the world that you start getting math-rounding errors in the vertex position of 3D models. Fun stuff! Modern engines (or modern systems) sometimes (not always) "re-center" the world coordinates periodically to avoid this when traveling very long distances.
This man speaks truth; If you play FF14 this is also why your furniture shifts slightly after modelling your apartment sometimes. The decimal points are rounded off to a certain position meaning it'll shift a few pixels randomly once in a while.
Yep, I expect when the game engine devs created it they weren't expecting a continuous coordinate system across enormous distances. Eventually the number of bits in the mantissa gets stretched thin as numbers get very large. It's the same reason on your average scientific calculator if you add 1 to 10^99 you still only have 10^99.
"This is the Afterlife, but it is not eternity... But then where does the soul go next?" Come on, this line alone has give this more character than all of Ubisoft's games over the last decade together.
All of the weird cryptic musings of the npcs voiced in that horrible uncanny TTS threw me into a state of complete awe at just how atmospheric it all is. That's dark fantasy done right.
tons of those lines were genuinely great writing imo (considering the overall theme and atmosphere). i would be proud to have come up with this weird stuff
i have to say, with every passing minute this video became more entrancing, and looked like a 10/10 creepypasta. And after watching the video, i'm 100% sure that this game is a memetic agent.
this is honestly a really cool setting, and if fleshed out as a single player game, could be really promising. I love this janky cursed aesthetic and the massive unsettling scale. There's an air of mystery about it. Totally untapped potential
Kinda reminds me a bit of Wrought Flesh vibes wise, big desert, gorey aesthetic, ominous places and undertone, weird but interesting jank both visually and gameplay wise (which is quite hard). Though of course that one is more of action sci-fi
this game almost perfectly captures a genuine feeling of early gaming, something that is extremely rare to come by now due to how fast people take games apart to the last file and share their findings online. just look at how Mario 64, early Pokemon or Zelda used to have all these rumors, some innocent, some very creepy. and the endless gaming creepypastas back in the hayday. early Minecraft was the last game i really ever experienced this subtle horror in: the fog, the endlessness, the loneliness, the lack of online resources and your young self's inability to think very critically and so you soak up the scary rumors and try to figure this game out by yourself while you feel watched. i think Animyst channels this exact energy: there are no resources online, you can't apply some long standing gaming knowledge just like when you were young, the endless empty world, and this inability to really make sense of it paired with the low graphics and fog, the loneliness with structures made by someone but there's nobody there. this feels like a game i could've played in 2006 and share rumors with friends on the school yard as we collectively shit ourselves. and i think that's beautiful.
You captured it perfectly. I couldn’t put a finger on what this game made me feel, but I think that’s it. A sense of wonder and curiosity that can’t be answered as easily as games that have been picked apart.
"try to figure this game out by yourself while you feel watched" this right here made me feel like I've felt this before without knowing, some early 2000 games really had that feeling of angst and I was never a brave child
@@goldengolem4670 Tiss like a loooot of dioptries if I understand it correctly. Far too much to compensate with glasses. So you see basicaly just smudges of color
@@goldengolem4670partially blind can mean only one eye is affected or they can see some things but not very well. Most people who have blindness don't actually see blackness. They have some amount of sight to varying degrees. Sorry if that was rambly.
@@jungtothehuimang Yes most people that are blind can distinguish high contrast e.g. shadows on bright ground. Usually takes a lot of concentration to figure out what the shapes mean.
A little over a day of this gem being posted, Animyst playercounts skyrocketed to a staggering 94 player 24 hour peak at the time of writing, may those brave soldiers find all the pages
To be honest, if you're going to use text to speech, this is the way. With the characters, voice and speech patterns being quite detached from human, there's no space for the uncanny valley to set in. This works, unlike people making photorealistic human characters with realistic sounding text to speech.
Josh’s ability to find cursed gems is legitimately unmatched, these videos provide something invaluable, recording small forgotten pieces of gaming history that are more than worth preserving and for that im incredibly glad to have found his channel
Right? Think of how many projects never see the light of day. They either get shared in private only communities, are never shared period, or like Animyst they just get forgotten. Lost to the sands of time. The world of low budget, indie games is fascinating.
I just love how Josh becomes increasingly more intense in his tone throughout the video. It really makes it feel like there's an obsession with the game slowly building up and adds beautifully to the vibe of the video over all.
The consistently weird portrayal of the game, intentional or not, is one of its greatest strengths. It's like the player is experiencing the game in an actual state of undeath - you can't properly comprehend the world and its characters, you can't interact, everything is *wrong*, like a fever dream that never ends.
I think this game is deserving of a mini series. This has to be the most interesting MMO you’ve done as of late and it’s absolutely worthy of more attention
Glad to see everyone agrees. The voices match the atmosphere extremely well. The game has a few good designs/ideas it just plays like an alpha. Got some potential
Typical josh... I mean i'm enjoying the series, but there's a lot of "THIS IS THE MOST INSANE/ANNOYING/STUPID THING EVER GUYS, LOOK!!!" Thing: *Just below average or even somewhat good. (like in this case)*
Now I know in which type of evil Josh turned after playing this cursed game, cause now it has a hundred players peak and 50 playing right now, it was brought to live it had never seen before. Truly a work of Master Necromancer, hats down.
This is genuinely breathtakingly mysterious. It's full in an empty sort of way, and empty in a strangely fulfilling way. It's wrong in all the right ways, and right in a few wrong ones, but that doesn't take away the atmosphere of stepping into something truly different from everything else. Much like Otherland, I think we've found something here, and I think a series could be something a lot of people could enjoy.
That text to speech is actually AMAZING. It's so good that I almost think it being so awful was an intentional choice. It adds a very deep layer of unreality, is unsettling as hell and fits perfectly with the vibe of this world. Paired with that background ambiance, and I unironically think it was a great choice....what a game..the whole concept of the story, world and the friends/cursed one is so unique and fascinating. I would LOVE if this game could be given a full team, a decent budget, and turned into a higher quality single player horror game. It could be incredible.
I think an bigger budget and larger team would actually rob this game of its unique charm, a big part of what seems to make this game work as well as it does is that it looks off, like its not quite real.
Imagine dropping 100 mil to finish some random guys fever dream game that he finished 2% of lol you'd basically be making the whole game because there's essentially nothing here but the idea of 8 pages and 4 enemy types.
Gotta be honest, I’m diggin the text to speak. It has a detached eerie sound, perfect for reanimated beings. It’s just intriguing to me and I like it. Id love to see you do a small series on this 😅
Yeah you gotta think that any voice they had would be surreal and detached being that they have no lungs or vocal chords. It would almost be a property of the landscape more than the character. So it does fit. It's like something that should never be able to speak struggling to do so.
Feels like the most unique games with lots of potential always die due to ... lack of copying what is popular? Money? Patience of the developer(s)? One day.. I hope to make something like this. Something that people will find randomly while bored, and will feel captivated by. It doesnt have to be a success. It doesnt even need to be good. It just has to be there to be discovered and maybe intreague a few people. Mysteries aren't meant to be known by many people anyway.
this game is unique but it's rough. all they need to do is to smooth the combat and button. let the rest be it, but the player should not be hindered by bad control first thing first.
Genuine mysteries, in games like Mortal, were one of our very favorite experiences in gaming leading up to Animyst development. There are so many things we could have done better, trippy that it's delivering some mystery now in 2023, in some part due to its shortcomings.
In the end Josh sounds like some Lovecraftian protagonist. Caught by the madness, going deeper to find and get to know something unknowable, leaving behind, shred by shred, their sanity.
It's always fun when Josh plays dead games. You can check the steam charts and see just how impactful his videos are. As of writing this, there are now 45 players online in Animyst
This cursed game has evoked something in me, the desire to tame the desert and venture through the tombs of the undead... What have you done to me, Josh? Why have you shown me this cursed piece of the internet? Why could you not stop, when there was a part of your humanity left?
A tiny interesting thing about all this: I love the subtle storytelling and worldbuilding that all the fancy magic you get pales in comparison to the weapon the first boss drops, which is just an ACTUAL WEAPON, made of steel and wood. The rest of Animyst deliberately makes very little sense, but that one detail speaks so clearly and loudly that I adore it.
Fancy magic : - throw bouncy rock - sends flies bothering your foes - chute of flaming material Regular weapon : Big, deliberate, hammer strike to the face. It all makes senses.
it's kind of evocative of how in Dark Souls, it's heavily implied that miracles, or holy magic, used to be a lot stronger, but because you cast miracles by reciting certain legends basically, the legends are getting further and further from the original truth, and further and further from the divinity they draw from
It always amazes me how a TH-cam video can change the activity in a game, 94 players online at the same time after this video was released and 14 peak within last 24h with 4 playing while i type it. It's really interesting to see
This series is like watching an explorer discover weird unfinished worlds forgotten by most. It's so strange to realize that although these games are only digital they are still "real" places in a strange way with their own history and people who where part of it no less real then any of us
Five months later that review rating is up to 86% positive with double the total number of reviews lmao the spike in concurrent activity dropped off pretty fast but there are more people on average playing than before the video released, at least for right now I've been sorta binging these Worst MMO Ever videos out of sheer boredom and curiosity, but this whole story in particular is honestly surreal maybe it resonates with me because I've been cursed my whole life with tons of neat ideas for things and absolutely none of the skills or commitment to do anything with them honestly aside from the lag and straight up incorrect movement the game seems to create an absolutely perfect and captivating atmosphere mostly by accident or out of necessity, with that horrifying and ominous text-to-speech voiceover, the vast emptiness coupled with the suffocating feeling of the darkness simple, rough, unpolished games like this feel just as immersive as the more professional, detailed, properly finished stuff sometimes, and when they do they also have this feeling of personality that I love
I found watching this video to be strangely compelling in an unsettling way, almost like a condensed version of the game itself. "Is he actually going to find a page?" "Why am I even watching this video?" Anyways, I made it to the end, and have now downloaded this cursed digital experience. Thank you, Josh.
Thanks to you the game is alive again. You can't imagine how much joy you bring to the creators with your work. You really did something great with this
This feels like a creepypasta/ARG come to live. A mysterious and disturbing game, long forgotten, in which lies a secret that no one knows about since most people weren't able to finish it, and those few who did were never seen again. Except now the game has a small player base, so happy ending.
@@toukoenriaze9870Right? In my mind I have so many ideas to make the best games ever but in reality they'd probably be burned in piles because of how bad they are to play 😂
I could make a great game, but it wouldn't be feasible in the monetary sense and would need insane specs. At least these guys did better than Star Citizen!
Honestly, I respect it. I, too, have such ideas and worlds full of stories I want to tell, but I lack the talent. I applaud the developers for being able to create as much as they did. It's not easy.
This game is coming back, josh. Simply by creating this video, you have brought it back. The devs are patching things, fixing bugs, and i think they have plans down the road to finish it.
The staircase at 34:08 is what I would call a sky base, essentially the player deleted his own stairs and made it impossible for anyone to get to their base, so basically they have base that is impossible to raid.
@@Tarpit_ I think the point is that it's not possible to build on another player's site, thus the 'impossible' part of raiding it. edit: with that said, it's a good point about the flying. But that's also explained by the player _very likely having no clue_ that the game ends up involving flying if you get far enough. The idea is solid in theory.
That text to speech really creeps me out, it's not spoken like it's even attempting to be human, it's just phonetically voicing the words it sees. I love it
I couldn't imagine any other kind of voiceover for these NPCs. The robotic sounds with the skeletal bodies remind me involuntarily of Necrons. Harbingers of a lost civilization, in endless suffering, cursed to rise over and over again.
This video made me feel very uncomfortable and I love it. There's just something very eerie about feeling like you're alone in such a big world when it's unintended to be so.
PS. Props to whoever made the skybox. Those seemingly volumetric clouds look awesome when breaking to reveal atmosphere, especially when the sun is involved.
this is the most intrigued and mystified I've been by a game in a LONG time. I'm so glad you went deeper into it than the generic mmos, this really deserved it. I hope this video gets the game a mini revival and someone posts some playthroughs because wow there's so much here that's insanely interesting and unique, I love obscure games like this
The voicelines are a purposefully-made-monotone version of the Votrax SC-01A Speech Synthesizer. Usually they had a bit of tone to them, but there's a lot floating around that don't. The ones that don't are usually used for that creepy effect. For the whisper, it's either still Votrax with whisper settings or it's the Whisper from a DecTalk, which you can get for free (and is the same voice of Moonbase Alpha, but not the Whisper setting). It sounds more like a Votrax whisper.
I don't know why but your personality is so comforting. You make me feel like I'm sipping on a warm cup of hot chocolate while being hugged. It's like your videos take the edge off my depression somehow
I don't know why, because I see similar comments on various creator's videos all the time and usually don't perceive them as particularly sincere; but this one made me feel less like it's a bot farming likes, and more like a real human, a struggling one, saying something genuinely heartfelt. Iunno, maybe it's just my own MH falling off a cliff and a case of projection, but I feel for you. And if you're out there, I hope you're doing okay.
Please go see your friends and family. I know we all got homestuck since the pandemic, but go out and talk to some real people. Josh is just a youtuber
after seeing this entire thing i want a full playthrough of josh playing Fear and Hunger, so I can see his impressions and the entire game since i didn't look for anyone else playing
The idea of having factions all be undead, and the death mechanic allowing you to swap factions freely seems like a very interesting approach to how you can try to balance factions in an MMO while still making sense thematically.
Eh in reality it'd probably turn out like WoW, where nobody wants to be in the minority faction so 1 faction is essentially dead on most servers. Except this game doesn't have servers so that'd mean 1 faction would probably just be dead period, who'd want to be in the faction that actually gets killed out there
I honestly hope to create something as entrancing as this game. There's something really fascinating and genuine about it, like there's no withholding on the developer's part, and it proves that skill isn't required to make worthwhile art.
I think the fact the world is so empty and was INTENDED to be filled with player creation between the POIs is part of the tragic solemn vibe too. It's a grim vibe with a grim setting that had the trappings of people making something from it but it never happened.
I honestly loved downloading the game and running around in the world. I feel like everything from the textures to the voicelines serves the aesthetic of an extremely cursed bootleg game disc that get's passed around on a schoolyard. :D That was a wonderful creepy, nostalgic ride.
"What drives these players to make these endless staircases to nothing." Tzeentch: *has an endless forbidden staircase that no one has ever reached to the top of because reasons* "I also like how what I said applies to the penises as well." *Slaanesh has entered the chatroom*
I don't want to ruin the mystery but some of the stairs to nowhere were made to jump off because you can make a glider that gets you around a little quicker.
Idk if im emotionally unstable or what but this video made me sob - I absolutely love how wild and dark and personal this game is. I've never experienced anything like it and im really happy that it was found by someone that highlighted it objectively and showed it to so many people
Maybe youre just a little unstable, sobbing and all, but I admit, it made me feel something. I can't really explain in language what it is. And I'm basically dead inside so it's not usual for something to actually move me.
The video mad me teary, but seeing the outpouring of the support afterwards really got me. Especially the devs being so enthusiastic about it. I'm so used to narcissistic game devs who can't admit their game is bad that seeing them recognize their limits and shortcomings openly is heartwarming.
On top of the eerie atmosphere everyone has discussed, "Resource Mode" is positively psychedelic. Seeing those infinitely tall beams of multicoloured light stretch all the way into the distance across that bleak and barren landscape makes me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or maybe End Of Evangelion.
40:32 I've never really gotten the appeal of premieres before, but this moment? This made me understand. I was actually caught off guard by the genuine delight I felt, and it wouldn't have worked if I was watching it on demand. Really brings back that Otherland vibe.
The theme of this game is fantastic, if the gameplay was as good as what they were trying to do with the atmosphere I feel like it could have been pretty great, so it's a big shame it turned out how it did and i hope someone runs with this kind of macabre idea for a world again.
This game had no need to be an MMO. If the dev(s) had shown some restraint the unnerving concept could have made for a very cool building/survival/horror solo exploration game.
There is something incredibly badass about finding -- as a random drop -- a magic staff that gives you the ability to summon a giant meteor. One that changes the ambient music while the spell is happening. Imagine if there was an item like that in Warcraft. People would spend hundreds of hours grinding to obtain it.
It ALMOST did really- Until everything became generic numbers and values. Remember how it was supposed to have "One per server" rarity items that never happened?
@@sirreznov7823 On top of that, remember advanced or side classes too? Like arch druid is one that sticks out. And all these other side features that simply never happened to keep chasing a new gimmick or invalidated bit of work in one expac that will become redundant in the next.
Animyst is legit a good game because I can check in on it once a year, meet a dev and be completely blown away about how weird it is every time. I can't get anywhere near the same memorable experiences from something like WoW or Destiny.
The voice lines give me the vibe that they're vocaloids and are very purposely used the way they are and that it was more of an artistic choice to fit the whole atmosphere than it being shitty text to speech
Good job Josh, you now have alerted a bunch of people that a mostly dead mmo has actual progression and an objective. I'm sure we'll see videos of people gathering the Book of Lore in the coming months.
This was so bizarre and so fascinating. You gave it more love than it deserved...or maybe exactly the love it deserved. To tell its own very, very strange story to more people. I love that because of this video, this strange game found so much love all of the sudden and people willing to give it a shot. How cool! It's amazing that you helped resurrect it for awhile just like your character in game was. Mad props to the devs too!
This felt surreal. Reminds me of "that one game you played decades ago when you were a kid, can remember only vague images of having played it and can't remember what it was called or any strong detail and can never find out what it was, or if it was just a fever dream".
There was a crazy MMO i remember playing called Fung wan Online, it was a martial arts MMO where your class was based on what weapon skills/style you picked or trained with
There's a bizarre space builder sim game I saw on TH-cam years ago which I've never been able to find since --- it's one of these resource gathering games where you collect the resources to build the machines to make the parts to create the harvesters to do the research to get the science to, etc. You start out on foot on an alien planet and eventually you build your own spacecraft and explore the solar system (and maybe nearby stars?). I remember it as a 3D first-person-view game, with terrible, amateurish graphics; blocky models, low-res textures, generally migraine-inducing. But I've never seen a trace of it. Now I have no idea whether I just imagined the whole thing.
congrats josh, the top number of player jumped from 14 to 69 by the power of your videos. the power of your words has more than quadruple the population of this game at his peak. Bringing life to inanimate thing, a true animyst right there
I can't believe you revived the game. The all-time peak players is now 69 (NICE) with 62 active players at this moment. I hope we can get that video with the lore and final boss now. Edit: It even had a news update addressing the lag issue due to the new highest number of players. :D
This was oddly captivating. There's something to this whole...experience. Not sure what or how much of it is even real but boy it is there and its alluring.
This and abandoned games like it have a post apocalypse feel to them. You find vast abandoned places, clearly once meant to be bustling with players but long abandoned, monuments to player determination stood and unmatched by the NPCs around, worlds existing on abandoned servers forgotten by their creators.
this is like the guy you meet at a pub, and is the nicest person you have ever met, he says he likes to make games, you are friends for the next 30 years and you think you genuinely know everything about him. and then you finally see the game he was talking about
The items vibrating are likely because of the way computers deal with floating point values. basically, the farther you are from the coordinates of 0,0,0 the more rounding the game does when rendering where stuff is, which causes the stuff being rendered to move more across your screen since the rounding becomes less accurate.
I saw this game on steam like yesterday.. I downloaded it because of the good reviews and interesting art style. And I was surprised how many players there were. I now know why.
To be honest the idea of the game itself sounds neat I think it would benefit a lot more as a single player game not at MMO shame that the devs gave up
This feels like it came from the mind of a mad individual trying to put their dreams into reality. The stuff that the classical movies are made out of. Incredibly compelling, but only a few have the courage and will to try it.
@@0816M3RC Nah. There's an allure to the genuinely weird. Maybe not everyone feels it, maybe the same things don't do it for everyone, but it exists. If you're lucky, sometime you'll find something that makes you feel so puzzled that you just HAVE to see more, and then you'll get it. There's no sense trashing what compels someone else.
This game is like some sort of purgatory simulator. It reminds me of some dark reality outside of our own that nobody spends too much time in. It's very weird.. I want more videos on it
I was one of the first supporters for this game back when it released. All my money was well spent on these guys. They truly care about this game and I am absolutely surprised you found it. I hope people play and enjoy it!
It's a case of if they truly cared they would at least promote it or do something to make it more approachable while keeping the soul of it intact, not to piss on the parade. It's a FANTASTIC concept- But it's skeletal (forgive the pun) and should have had some more polishing and immediate contents, much more nice and shiny games have died because the market was super saturated for a time but a few stood the test of time because they well and truly did care. Same issue as project gorgon, people who have a day hobby they make coffee break money off of only in this case no one was even playing. IE: Tree of Savior LOOKs like a labor of love with all the animations, unique graphics, locales, aesthetic, historical references and research but falls absolutely apart X hours in.
@@InvadeNormandy it's a 2 man dev team that launched the game in 2018 after running a modded Rust server of the same name. They've been making the game in-between their several day jobs and using their jobs to keep the servers up because they are passionate about the game. They spent the first two years getting streamers to to play it with their chat and very few stuck around after those streams. They genuinely worked on updating the game for 4 years and the most players they got were 15 online at once. Tarpit, the Dev who creates all the textures, music, sounds, and models, used to stream game development on his Twitch and has since turned his streams into art and music streams since all his work mixes together. They are now hard at work doing QoL updates for the now 100+ new players trying to log on an play following the video. They've pushed two new balance patches in already. Only mentioning this because they did legit try to keep the game going and did many things to get the name out.
@@thealmightyjack like i say to people, if you are stuck at something... sometimes, you just need to wait for a miracle. And a miracle did happen after 4 years. The perfect streamer for the job, played it, reviewed it, and brought it to a much larger audience. A miracle (of a modern kind)
@@thealmightyjack I suppose and that's fair enough. There is a lot of mono and duo team people who can get things "off the ground" sorta I am not discounting the work outright and I was a bit shitty about that. But the realistic expectations of "But where's it going and why"
@@thealmightyjack it's tough out there, there's a reason that one of the biggest pieces of advice to new would-be developers is "MMOs take at least 50 million dollars and a team of 50 people with at least 500 years of combined dev experience to release something actually fun not a bare bones 'technically an MMO'", there's also a reason that of all the big kickstarters, NONE of the big MMO projects have actually delivered successfully on their full specs and roadmap, not any one I'm aware of. Mad respect for what they were able to accomplish, clearly it's a massive labor of love, and I hope they look at it and go "we accomplished something thought to be impossible," but unfortunately it still isn't any fun to play and design choices were made that ensured it could never be successful. Sadly, they didn't do the ONE thing that might have actually gotten them more traction-- a developer-written wiki explaining what in the hell is going on and how to get started at your task. I am sure the developers played this and weren't frustrated into going into the code and nerfing the hell out of the enemies, so there's probably some way to reliably fight them (unfortunately like many small dev teams they may be testing on a local host that performs far differently, so they might actually see the enemies that are invisible thanks to jenky netcode, or have more responsive attacks and TO THEM the game seems perfectly balanced but once you have to put up with netcode and latency it is not playable) if they let us in on the secret perhaps there's a lot more fun to be had.
I don't know what I expected initially from this, but I wasn't expecting much. In spite of all of that, it sounds like under the layers of artificial difficulty and poorly balanced combat and poorly scripted enemies, there's the bones of a genuinely good, if niche, game. I hope that the dev takes the lessons he's learned from Animyst and goes further next time. It is really hard to pull off the sort of off-kilter alien feel that Josh is describing here and have it actually feel good to experience.
Thank you so much for making a video on this game. Downloaded it today and I’m absolutely having a blast. Met several players who found all 8 pages and they have all been so helpful. The world is amazing the combat as actually super fun once you get some cool spells and the dialogue is superb. This game is loaded with charm and is absolutely worth a playthrough for anyone who is into surreal sandbox quirky fantasy games.
![ผัวเถื่อน - ยูริ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P08ORRVDGl8/mqdefault.jpg)
During the video premier, enough people logged on that we actually broke the player peak record:
twitter.com/JoshStrifeHayes/status/1670156752170393600
I'm not surprised. I was already forming a battle-plan in my head to round up some trailblazers and explore this world in full
If U want a cursed mmo, try project gorgon. The developer is a diehard trump fan, and if u mention anything negative about trump in global chat, u get an instant permaban. It also has something like 90% upvotes, enjoy the curse.
@@undertyped1 I love Project Gorgon. It’s a surprisingly competent mmorpg for a husband and wife team.
@@undertyped1 To be fair, I don't think a developer's political opinions necessarily make a MMO or any game bad, but it's unfortunate if they let that influence their moderation decisions.
@@onekun5233 I don't think its a bad mmo, just cursed.
Hey! Tarpit here, one of two Animyst devs. This weekend has been surreal! We had moved on creatively years ago, taking a huge amount from the experience of making Animyst, and contentedly assuming that a very few people would ever go into the world. Our pre-Josh upper limit was 14 players on a PvP event (going back to 2018.) The game is designed and balanced for an average of 5-10 players constantly, a number that still ended up being overly ambitious for us to attain. Josh was absolutely right pointing out that a multiplayer game without a community literally never gets experienced, no matter how good (or scuffed.)
All that to say, we are so thrilled that people are playing Animyst! We both adore the video. Writing this on the Monday after it dropped, we have patched 6 times since the video came out. (All of the glory for that goes to Ded; I made the game worlds but can't assist with programming labor) Lag, and other issues resulting from these hitherto unseen server loads are much better than they were feeling Saturday. The game is built for group PvP, and we will keep turning the screws on networking and optimizations to make that as possible as possible.
Neither of us thought we would ever update again. We are still disoriented and need to think deeply about what the future holds.
Josh, you made instant fans out of the both of us. The video is hilarious, awesomely done, and perhaps overly generous.
The game looks awesome dude. If my pc wasn't dead I would cjeck it out!
@@Telepathic_Snail_Overlords thanks a ton! It is not the most optimized game of all times so even people with good rigs aren't performing like they should
All I could think while watching this video was how fucking awesome this game looked. You guys did a great job ❤
The tab thing really does make part of the text, doesn't it? Anyway, I will call some friends and try to play it, my morbid curiosity got the better of me
I cannot believe I am saying this about a game that shows up in this series, but I think this games has massive potential. It's creepy, intended or not, and honestly, I'd love to see more out of it.
I actually like the voicelines, it feels so wrong and raw exactly what you would expect from someone who has been dead for 10.000 years. It adds to the uncomfortable atmosphere
Agreed, it feels unnatural and forced. Which I guess is what would happen if a pair of reanimated bones tried speaking
You expect dead people to sound like broken robot children?
Same, it's really fucking creepy and fits well
Samies. It was so damn weird it made me think of that one twisted MMO Josh did the series on. It definitely set the mood and made it so much more creepy than what an actual voice actor could have done.
I concur. If that was a deliberate design decision, it was exactly on point.
We are making Animyst 2!
Weird to now be seeing this video 9 months later, and 4 days ago this was posted. Good luck and glad to see it!
YOOOOOOOOO
For real? Just when I considered playing this in the future? Sweet.
Awesome
I'm already enjoying this game as it is and can't wait to see what the next game looks like.
Josh... this needs a series... we need to form a group and find all pages.... there is no other way....
I'm in
@@richardfrederick6009 You have my femur for the expedition fund!
Lets overload this guy's only server!
This is the way.
I have a life mission now
Somehow this "worst mmo ever" turns into "forgotten world explorer" type of series and honestly, this is what I am here for!
You might be interested in Josh's "Otherland" series (it's in his playlist section).
@@amixofgeekcontent This is how I found Josh way back when. There was something about it that seemed similar to dot hack, an incredibly in-depth reviewer who outlined his time with the story, characters, and a legitimate enthusiasm that didn't feel forced or self-absorbed.
I remember reading a comment at the time where some one was complaining "You should put these into 15 minute chunks. You don't have the charisma and the game isn't interesting enough to be given this much time. If you do fix your style I could recommend you to..." And so on and so forth.
Oh, it was so nice to see how quickly Josh's channel grew, and how varied his wheelhouse really became.
@@amixofgeekcontent Thanks! Will check it out :)
@@amixofgeekcontent That series is the stuff of legends.
@@amixofgeekcontent I half expected this video to turn into "Otherland 2"
Started playing the game right after the video was posted. Managed to gather all 8 pages in about 6-8 hours. Now the real grind begins! The 2 guys who made the game were actively in the game communicating to players, answering questions, replacing items lost by server resets, and just general being cool dudes. They’ve dropped at least 2 performance patches in the 48 hours since the population has boomed. Super awesome to be a part of!
Patch 2.0.
Grass is now green, instead of red. 😂
Even if this game doesn’t really go anywhere, the new players gave these 2 guys motivation and a spark. This game may not be it, but maybe the next attempt they will carry that spark with them to something amazing. They clearly have a passion!
Wholesome af
What happened when you found all 8
@@parcol576 Josh said that you unlock flying and the last boss.
The text to speech madness oddly fits in this game, sounds like a transmission from a hellish dimension or something.
My honest first thought about it was; this is so bad, it can't _not_ be deliberate. And I agree with you - it's fitting in an odd way.
Yeah it has a definite "Black Lodge" vibe to it
Yea, and its definetely done on purpouse. Fits the game perfectly
This is totally an indie horror trope, the archaic text to speech voices used for an unsettling effect. and it really does work
Yeah, it’s jarring but I dig it! Ofc I haven’t experienced it firsthand, maybe it gets old quick, but it’s kinda cool to me!
90% sure this game's dev had glimpsed beyond the veil and was compelled to create it after witnessing the eldritch truth underneath and enveloping our reality
He has seen the far future. the realms beyond time that will overcome our earth after humans have gone. and that future is Animyst.
They have seen beyond the veil, a horrific truth, they found it there and in that moment of brainblasting realization they ceased to be man.. and become a herald.. an avatar of the crawling chaos..
@@luisernestochaconguerrero778so...a typical Tuesday.
That is a high degree of certainty. I'm with this man.
Out of all MMOs he reviewed, this one is the anti-thesis of the usual aftermath. Instead of shutting down a dying game for good, he breathed life into it.
@@LVZKV bozo
I was gonna say I'm about to try this shit lmao
There's something poetic about it given the concept and setting of the game.
And it's so beautiful to see! I'm so happy for the devs, they made something special that deserves to be played and shared
This is the opposite of "the TERA incident" lol
Just so you know, this video almost singlehandedly brought this game back from the dead. After watching, I downloaded it and played and we had about 60 players on the server. It got enough attention that the two devs who made the game even pushed out a new update to help with the lag that having that many people on the server caused. This game is awesome and now that there are a few people playing, it's one I'd recommend people actually look at.
The video was just released a day ago
@@professor0reo700thats how powerful this video is, it effects things retroactively...
As of 7 PM/19:00 on June 18 2023, Steamcharts says it has 61 people. Because of the surreal and empty yet disturbingly interesting potential this game has, I hope this game actually is carried by these people.
@@EJ_Red there is a fair chance it will, since they are a lot more prepared for the game, after this video, than if they had stumbled upon it randomly on steam.
It's all those homeless Tera Online players...
Josh Strife Hayes is officially not the MMO Grim Reaper, but the MMO Necromancer. He commands them to die and to raise from their graves in equal measure.
"Made by 2 mortals" Keeping the server up for 5 years is an accomplishment in of itself and shows their dedication.
I'm not sure how the game's servers worked, but it simply could have been a server hosted on the dev's own computer. They said themselves it was never supposed to have tons of players, so that would be a relatively low-cost method of keeping the server up
If anyone is curious, that jittery effect on the weapons is floating point error. Towards the end of the video you can see a lot of jittering. Basically the player character is so far from the center of the world that you start getting math-rounding errors in the vertex position of 3D models. Fun stuff! Modern engines (or modern systems) sometimes (not always) "re-center" the world coordinates periodically to avoid this when traveling very long distances.
Wow, interesting
This man speaks truth; If you play FF14 this is also why your furniture shifts slightly after modelling your apartment sometimes. The decimal points are rounded off to a certain position meaning it'll shift a few pixels randomly once in a while.
Floating point errors, the bane of every programmer. So incredibly hard to debug.
@@oliver_twistor Just make everything a double and pray nobody notices.
Yep, I expect when the game engine devs created it they weren't expecting a continuous coordinate system across enormous distances. Eventually the number of bits in the mantissa gets stretched thin as numbers get very large. It's the same reason on your average scientific calculator if you add 1 to 10^99 you still only have 10^99.
the idea of a character being formed from the reconstituted bits of a variety of people in a mass grave is horrifying and inspired.
The idea is incredibly horrifying yet they are friendly(I think). I am going to use them as a basis for a type of undead.
I am frantically taking notes tbh
So basically Espada from Bleach?
@@GrimSawyer52 I guess it would be hard not to be friendly when you're made up of other people
but that's just real life
"This is the Afterlife, but it is not eternity... But then where does the soul go next?"
Come on, this line alone has give this more character than all of Ubisoft's games over the last decade together.
All of the weird cryptic musings of the npcs voiced in that horrible uncanny TTS threw me into a state of complete awe at just how atmospheric it all is. That's dark fantasy done right.
@@BrazilianAnarchy What the developer was going for with the voices is actually pretty good but could've been executed a lot better.
@@BrazilianAnarchy They put the Mork and the Borg together--
as a professional writer, that is a bit of incredibly haunting writing given the setting
tons of those lines were genuinely great writing imo (considering the overall theme and atmosphere). i would be proud to have come up with this weird stuff
i have to say, with every passing minute this video became more entrancing, and looked like a 10/10 creepypasta.
And after watching the video, i'm 100% sure that this game is a memetic agent.
It could definitely be played as a skeletons war meme generator
It is absolutely an SCP
this is honestly a really cool setting, and if fleshed out as a single player game, could be really promising. I love this janky cursed aesthetic and the massive unsettling scale. There's an air of mystery about it. Totally untapped potential
"fleshed out" good one
that game already exists, it's called Amnesia.
@@spamuel98 Amnesia wishes its aesthetic was actually this interesting, lol
Kinda reminds me a bit of Wrought Flesh vibes wise, big desert, gorey aesthetic, ominous places and undertone, weird but interesting jank both visually and gameplay wise (which is quite hard). Though of course that one is more of action sci-fi
Take a look at Lunacid. It got the same vibe but is a real game. It's like the King Field games.
this game almost perfectly captures a genuine feeling of early gaming, something that is extremely rare to come by now due to how fast people take games apart to the last file and share their findings online. just look at how Mario 64, early Pokemon or Zelda used to have all these rumors, some innocent, some very creepy. and the endless gaming creepypastas back in the hayday. early Minecraft was the last game i really ever experienced this subtle horror in: the fog, the endlessness, the loneliness, the lack of online resources and your young self's inability to think very critically and so you soak up the scary rumors and try to figure this game out by yourself while you feel watched.
i think Animyst channels this exact energy: there are no resources online, you can't apply some long standing gaming knowledge just like when you were young, the endless empty world, and this inability to really make sense of it paired with the low graphics and fog, the loneliness with structures made by someone but there's nobody there.
this feels like a game i could've played in 2006 and share rumors with friends on the school yard as we collectively shit ourselves.
and i think that's beautiful.
You captured it perfectly. I couldn’t put a finger on what this game made me feel, but I think that’s it. A sense of wonder and curiosity that can’t be answered as easily as games that have been picked apart.
The early Minecraft part is so true , thanks for putting into world I love u
"try to figure this game out by yourself while you feel watched" this right here made me feel like I've felt this before without knowing, some early 2000 games really had that feeling of angst and I was never a brave child
As a partially blind person, this is amazing. That TTS is basically what we had in the 2000s and its pure nostalgia.
What do you mean partially blind? What is that like? sorry if this is rude
@@goldengolem4670 Tiss like a loooot of dioptries if I understand it correctly. Far too much to compensate with glasses. So you see basicaly just smudges of color
@@goldengolem4670partially blind can mean only one eye is affected or they can see some things but not very well. Most people who have blindness don't actually see blackness. They have some amount of sight to varying degrees. Sorry if that was rambly.
@@jungtothehuimang
Yes most people that are blind can distinguish high contrast e.g. shadows on bright ground. Usually takes a lot of concentration to figure out what the shapes mean.
2000s more like 1970s
A little over a day of this gem being posted, Animyst playercounts skyrocketed to a staggering 94 player 24 hour peak at the time of writing, may those brave soldiers find all the pages
funny, for me it reads 86 all time peak
To be honest, if you're going to use text to speech, this is the way. With the characters, voice and speech patterns being quite detached from human, there's no space for the uncanny valley to set in. This works, unlike people making photorealistic human characters with realistic sounding text to speech.
Josh’s ability to find cursed gems is legitimately unmatched, these videos provide something invaluable, recording small forgotten pieces of gaming history that are more than worth preserving and for that im incredibly glad to have found his channel
Seriously curious how he came across Animyst
@@Tarpit_I'm sure the community helps. He probably has a long list of emails with good suggestions
Right? Think of how many projects never see the light of day. They either get shared in private only communities, are never shared period, or like Animyst they just get forgotten. Lost to the sands of time. The world of low budget, indie games is fascinating.
I just love how Josh becomes increasingly more intense in his tone throughout the video. It really makes it feel like there's an obsession with the game slowly building up and adds beautifully to the vibe of the video over all.
Man's an actor and it bloody well shows :P
@@Poldovico oh damn, I didn't even know that. Yeah that makes sense lmao
We listened in real time to a Lovecraft protagonist experiencing some Events
@@AuricomSystems Damn you're so right with this. Also Lovecraft is my favourite author so thanks for reminding me to read some of his stories again!
I adore how this one slowly shifted from 'review' to 'narrative descent into madness with uplifting if flawed finale'.
The consistently weird portrayal of the game, intentional or not, is one of its greatest strengths. It's like the player is experiencing the game in an actual state of undeath - you can't properly comprehend the world and its characters, you can't interact, everything is *wrong*, like a fever dream that never ends.
This series has been an adventure, thanks for taking us along on this quest of yours Josh.
PLLEASE DO THE MMO FLY FOR FUN
@@107olivier Ask Josh, not Zed!
I think this game is deserving of a mini series. This has to be the most interesting MMO you’ve done as of late and it’s absolutely worthy of more attention
Same actually. Having watched the video, I really want to see more of it. It's obscure enough that I can't find anything like it.
@@flame4864 cruelty squad
@@Methdemonthat game is definitely not obscure
@@TheNavigator4552 Well this is the first time I heard of it
Congratulations. You've officially transcended the format of the show and discovered a true piece of cryptic internet mystery.
What a weird experience. This was cursed, disturbing and mesmerizing. I will be thinking about the concept of Friends for a long time.
"The One Where Ross Gets Mutilated By a Human-Chicken Hybrid"
I thought the same- what a genius lore idea
Me too, I think about stuff like that. There's something really dark with a lot of flavour here
Guys, I have a bad feeling that it’s actually an SCP and it’s already too late to OH GOD ITS BEHIND M
Josh played up the voiced dialogue like it was going to be unbearable but then it played it was the most genius thing the developer could have done
It's so unnerving, it's Perfect
it kinda reminds me of twin peaks. In terms of unsettling on a budget, im inclined to agree
Glad to see everyone agrees. The voices match the atmosphere extremely well. The game has a few good designs/ideas it just plays like an alpha. Got some potential
th-cam.com/video/qItugh-fFgg/w-d-xo.html
Typical josh...
I mean i'm enjoying the series, but there's a lot of "THIS IS THE MOST INSANE/ANNOYING/STUPID THING EVER GUYS, LOOK!!!"
Thing: *Just below average or even somewhat good. (like in this case)*
Now I know in which type of evil Josh turned after playing this cursed game, cause now it has a hundred players peak and 50 playing right now, it was brought to live it had never seen before. Truly a work of Master Necromancer, hats down.
This is genuinely breathtakingly mysterious. It's full in an empty sort of way, and empty in a strangely fulfilling way. It's wrong in all the right ways, and right in a few wrong ones, but that doesn't take away the atmosphere of stepping into something truly different from everything else. Much like Otherland, I think we've found something here, and I think a series could be something a lot of people could enjoy.
Yeah it totally had some otherland vibes for sure. I really enjoyed the otherland series. This isn't as pretty but it does have the same kinda vibe.
One cannot criticize the game for being unimaginative. It's a truly refreshing setting in a genre clogged with store brand vaguely medieval fantasy.
That text to speech is actually AMAZING. It's so good that I almost think it being so awful was an intentional choice. It adds a very deep layer of unreality, is unsettling as hell and fits perfectly with the vibe of this world. Paired with that background ambiance, and I unironically think it was a great choice....what a game..the whole concept of the story, world and the friends/cursed one is so unique and fascinating. I would LOVE if this game could be given a full team, a decent budget, and turned into a higher quality single player horror game. It could be incredible.
I think an bigger budget and larger team would actually rob this game of its unique charm, a big part of what seems to make this game work as well as it does is that it looks off, like its not quite real.
The game should look unreal and otherworldly,heck this game gave more Cosmic horror than any official cthulhu game
With the objective being to find eight pages, the structure of the horror game creates itself.
Imagine dropping 100 mil to finish some random guys fever dream game that he finished 2% of lol you'd basically be making the whole game because there's essentially nothing here but the idea of 8 pages and 4 enemy types.
Gotta be honest, I’m diggin the text to speak. It has a detached eerie sound, perfect for reanimated beings. It’s just intriguing to me and I like it. Id love to see you do a small series on this 😅
Yeah you gotta think that any voice they had would be surreal and detached being that they have no lungs or vocal chords. It would almost be a property of the landscape more than the character. So it does fit. It's like something that should never be able to speak struggling to do so.
At least it’s not as bad as AI voices.
Feels like the most unique games with lots of potential always die due to ... lack of copying what is popular? Money? Patience of the developer(s)?
One day.. I hope to make something like this. Something that people will find randomly while bored, and will feel captivated by. It doesnt have to be a success. It doesnt even need to be good. It just has to be there to be discovered and maybe intreague a few people. Mysteries aren't meant to be known by many people anyway.
this game is unique but it's rough. all they need to do is to smooth the combat and button. let the rest be it, but the player should not be hindered by bad control first thing first.
I dream of making something like this one day too
Genuine mysteries, in games like Mortal, were one of our very favorite experiences in gaming leading up to Animyst development. There are so many things we could have done better, trippy that it's delivering some mystery now in 2023, in some part due to its shortcomings.
@@Tarpit_ hello! Are you the developer?
@@Noordledoordle I'm the artist who built the game worlds. The vast majority of development work was done by Ded
In the end Josh sounds like some Lovecraftian protagonist. Caught by the madness, going deeper to find and get to know something unknowable, leaving behind, shred by shred, their sanity.
Ok the skeletons being called "friends" and talking like aliens from 1940 had me dying
You know what, if there's any MMO that deserves to be found on a random disc somewhere in the attic, it's this one.
I read that as "Arctic," not attic and honestly, still works.
It's always fun when Josh plays dead games. You can check the steam charts and see just how impactful his videos are. As of writing this, there are now 45 players online in Animyst
😂 oh snap. I wonder if thr servers are okay
@@OmgBsitka The dev droped a patch today to solve this.
another thing I found amusing is you can basically see the days Josh played too with the random blips of 1 player online haha!
This cursed game has evoked something in me, the desire to tame the desert and venture through the tombs of the undead...
What have you done to me, Josh? Why have you shown me this cursed piece of the internet? Why could you not stop, when there was a part of your humanity left?
Such a cringe comment
@@Jiub_SNAnd yet, your reply is somehow more cringe.
@@Jiub_SNI am begging you to read a single book.
@@kexaronida book of lore
You’ve been super busy lately, thanks for all the hard work.
Hes been posting so much on onlyfans too, guys busy
A tiny interesting thing about all this: I love the subtle storytelling and worldbuilding that all the fancy magic you get pales in comparison to the weapon the first boss drops, which is just an ACTUAL WEAPON, made of steel and wood. The rest of Animyst deliberately makes very little sense, but that one detail speaks so clearly and loudly that I adore it.
I don't even know if that's intentional, but it so much captures the feeling of being in a dying, fading world.
Fancy magic :
- throw bouncy rock
- sends flies bothering your foes
- chute of flaming material
Regular weapon : Big, deliberate, hammer strike to the face.
It all makes senses.
Makes me think of what Conan The Barbarian was taught by his father.
it's kind of evocative of how in Dark Souls, it's heavily implied that miracles, or holy magic, used to be a lot stronger, but because you cast miracles by reciting certain legends basically, the legends are getting further and further from the original truth, and further and further from the divinity they draw from
It always amazes me how a TH-cam video can change the activity in a game, 94 players online at the same time after this video was released and 14 peak within last 24h with 4 playing while i type it.
It's really interesting to see
The idea of waking up with skeletal body parts not your own was fantastically creepy, the silhouettes of larger things across the plains looked great.
I love that the faction of mixed up skeletons killed in a mass execution are just called "Friends."
@@_JellyWalker Comrades. The pleb.
This series is like watching an explorer discover weird unfinished worlds forgotten by most. It's so strange to realize that although these games are only digital they are still "real" places in a strange way with their own history and people who where part of it no less real then any of us
There is a sadness, horror and loneliness to dead realms.
Five months later that review rating is up to 86% positive with double the total number of reviews lmao
the spike in concurrent activity dropped off pretty fast but there are more people on average playing than before the video released, at least for right now
I've been sorta binging these Worst MMO Ever videos out of sheer boredom and curiosity, but this whole story in particular is honestly surreal
maybe it resonates with me because I've been cursed my whole life with tons of neat ideas for things and absolutely none of the skills or commitment to do anything with them
honestly aside from the lag and straight up incorrect movement the game seems to create an absolutely perfect and captivating atmosphere mostly by accident or out of necessity, with that horrifying and ominous text-to-speech voiceover, the vast emptiness coupled with the suffocating feeling of the darkness
simple, rough, unpolished games like this feel just as immersive as the more professional, detailed, properly finished stuff sometimes, and when they do they also have this feeling of personality that I love
I found watching this video to be strangely compelling in an unsettling way, almost like a condensed version of the game itself. "Is he actually going to find a page?" "Why am I even watching this video?" Anyways, I made it to the end, and have now downloaded this cursed digital experience. Thank you, Josh.
Im glad this series is still going
well is it? it's not been 7 days since this video.
Thanks to you the game is alive again. You can't imagine how much joy you bring to the creators with your work. You really did something great with this
This feels like a creepypasta/ARG come to live. A mysterious and disturbing game, long forgotten, in which lies a secret that no one knows about since most people weren't able to finish it, and those few who did were never seen again.
Except now the game has a small player base, so happy ending.
This is what happen when you got more ideas than talent, but still passionate enough to do it.
That's worth some respect.
Saaame ... I don't want to build games ... I want to play them xD ... But I have some pretty great ideas (at least imo) for games I want to exist
@@toukoenriaze9870Right? In my mind I have so many ideas to make the best games ever but in reality they'd probably be burned in piles because of how bad they are to play 😂
I could make a great game, but it wouldn't be feasible in the monetary sense and would need insane specs.
At least these guys did better than Star Citizen!
Honestly, I respect it. I, too, have such ideas and worlds full of stories I want to tell, but I lack the talent. I applaud the developers for being able to create as much as they did. It's not easy.
I'm in that comment and I don't like it lol.
This game is coming back, josh. Simply by creating this video, you have brought it back. The devs are patching things, fixing bugs, and i think they have plans down the road to finish it.
The staircase at 34:08 is what I would call a sky base, essentially the player deleted his own stairs and made it impossible for anyone to get to their base, so basically they have base that is impossible to raid.
And the player has a home teleporter up there so they can teleport in there whenever they want.
You could raid it by building up to it with root or by unlocking flight and just flying up to it.
@@Tarpit_ I think the point is that it's not possible to build on another player's site, thus the 'impossible' part of raiding it.
edit: with that said, it's a good point about the flying. But that's also explained by the player _very likely having no clue_ that the game ends up involving flying if you get far enough. The idea is solid in theory.
@@MononymousM That's a dev
@@picardsolo2471 Hey, so it is - I obviously had no idea haha. That raises further questions!
That text to speech really creeps me out, it's not spoken like it's even attempting to be human, it's just phonetically voicing the words it sees. I love it
You can play as a skelly.
Absolutely bone-rattling choice.
10/10
I couldn't imagine any other kind of voiceover for these NPCs. The robotic sounds with the skeletal bodies remind me involuntarily of Necrons. Harbingers of a lost civilization, in endless suffering, cursed to rise over and over again.
This video made me feel very uncomfortable and I love it. There's just something very eerie about feeling like you're alone in such a big world when it's unintended to be so.
Yeah. I feel like this game is an example of liminality.
PS. Props to whoever made the skybox. Those seemingly volumetric clouds look awesome when breaking to reveal atmosphere, especially when the sun is involved.
this is the most intrigued and mystified I've been by a game in a LONG time. I'm so glad you went deeper into it than the generic mmos, this really deserved it. I hope this video gets the game a mini revival and someone posts some playthroughs because wow there's so much here that's insanely interesting and unique, I love obscure games like this
i actually really love the text-to-speech! i find it really charming and fitting for the vibe this game is going for.
"my legbones are from Skyrim horses"
You learn new things about Josh everyday
The voicelines are a purposefully-made-monotone version of the Votrax SC-01A Speech Synthesizer. Usually they had a bit of tone to them, but there's a lot floating around that don't. The ones that don't are usually used for that creepy effect. For the whisper, it's either still Votrax with whisper settings or it's the Whisper from a DecTalk, which you can get for free (and is the same voice of Moonbase Alpha, but not the Whisper setting). It sounds more like a Votrax whisper.
I don't know why but your personality is so comforting. You make me feel like I'm sipping on a warm cup of hot chocolate while being hugged. It's like your videos take the edge off my depression somehow
I don't know why, because I see similar comments on various creator's videos all the time and usually don't perceive them as particularly sincere; but this one made me feel less like it's a bot farming likes, and more like a real human, a struggling one, saying something genuinely heartfelt. Iunno, maybe it's just my own MH falling off a cliff and a case of projection, but I feel for you. And if you're out there, I hope you're doing okay.
@@MononymousM I think it's a real human commenting. I hope so (:
Please go see your friends and family. I know we all got homestuck since the pandemic, but go out and talk to some real people. Josh is just a youtuber
after seeing this entire thing i want a full playthrough of josh playing Fear and Hunger, so I can see his impressions and the entire game since i didn't look for anyone else playing
F&H is amazing
The idea of having factions all be undead, and the death mechanic allowing you to swap factions freely seems like a very interesting approach to how you can try to balance factions in an MMO while still making sense thematically.
And you can only really build full bases on one. So we were hoping you'd main one but be able to switch for the sake of group PVP.
Eh in reality it'd probably turn out like WoW, where nobody wants to be in the minority faction so 1 faction is essentially dead on most servers. Except this game doesn't have servers so that'd mean 1 faction would probably just be dead period, who'd want to be in the faction that actually gets killed out there
The ending here was exactly what an MMO adventure should feel like. Hats off to your playing and writing
I honestly hope to create something as entrancing as this game. There's something really fascinating and genuine about it, like there's no withholding on the developer's part, and it proves that skill isn't required to make worthwhile art.
I think the fact the world is so empty and was INTENDED to be filled with player creation between the POIs is part of the tragic solemn vibe too. It's a grim vibe with a grim setting that had the trappings of people making something from it but it never happened.
I love the entire aesthetic, this game is such an uncut gem that could shine if it had the proper support
I honestly loved downloading the game and running around in the world.
I feel like everything from the textures to the voicelines serves the aesthetic of an extremely cursed bootleg game disc that get's passed around on a schoolyard. :D
That was a wonderful creepy, nostalgic ride.
"What drives these players to make these endless staircases to nothing."
Tzeentch: *has an endless forbidden staircase that no one has ever reached to the top of because reasons*
"I also like how what I said applies to the penises as well."
*Slaanesh has entered the chatroom*
I don't want to ruin the mystery but some of the stairs to nowhere were made to jump off because you can make a glider that gets you around a little quicker.
@@thealmightyjack That would explain the stairway to heaven in Cathedral I found.
Idk if im emotionally unstable or what but this video made me sob - I absolutely love how wild and dark and personal this game is. I've never experienced anything like it and im really happy that it was found by someone that highlighted it objectively and showed it to so many people
Maybe youre just a little unstable, sobbing and all, but I admit, it made me feel something. I can't really explain in language what it is. And I'm basically dead inside so it's not usual for something to actually move me.
The video mad me teary, but seeing the outpouring of the support afterwards really got me. Especially the devs being so enthusiastic about it. I'm so used to narcissistic game devs who can't admit their game is bad that seeing them recognize their limits and shortcomings openly is heartwarming.
On top of the eerie atmosphere everyone has discussed, "Resource Mode" is positively psychedelic. Seeing those infinitely tall beams of multicoloured light stretch all the way into the distance across that bleak and barren landscape makes me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or maybe End Of Evangelion.
40:32 I've never really gotten the appeal of premieres before, but this moment? This made me understand. I was actually caught off guard by the genuine delight I felt, and it wouldn't have worked if I was watching it on demand. Really brings back that Otherland vibe.
The "No I kept going" gave me chills and I liked the video. Bravo I love this series
The theme of this game is fantastic, if the gameplay was as good as what they were trying to do with the atmosphere I feel like it could have been pretty great, so it's a big shame it turned out how it did and i hope someone runs with this kind of macabre idea for a world again.
Pathologic 2!
This game had no need to be an MMO. If the dev(s) had shown some restraint the unnerving concept could have made for a very cool building/survival/horror solo exploration game.
There is something incredibly badass about finding -- as a random drop -- a magic staff that gives you the ability to summon a giant meteor. One that changes the ambient music while the spell is happening. Imagine if there was an item like that in Warcraft. People would spend hundreds of hours grinding to obtain it.
It ALMOST did really- Until everything became generic numbers and values. Remember how it was supposed to have "One per server" rarity items that never happened?
@@InvadeNormandy Tbh when they didnt add them I stopped playing. The premise is cool af, even if only some massive orgs would be able to get one
@@sirreznov7823
On top of that, remember advanced or side classes too? Like arch druid is one that sticks out. And all these other side features that simply never happened to keep chasing a new gimmick or invalidated bit of work in one expac that will become redundant in the next.
Animyst is legit a good game because I can check in on it once a year, meet a dev and be completely blown away about how weird it is every time. I can't get anywhere near the same memorable experiences from something like WoW or Destiny.
The voice lines give me the vibe that they're vocaloids and are very purposely used the way they are and that it was more of an artistic choice to fit the whole atmosphere than it being shitty text to speech
That's what I was thinking. It's really creepy and fits too well to be done out of laziness
Doesn’t sound like any vocaloid
@animefan7424 kinda sounds like flower or fukase heavily distorted to me
On Josh's tombstone - "Here lies Josh Strife Hayes. He played Animyst, and then died (xx years later)"
Man, that skybox is _gorgeous._
It really feels like a different world.. lovely aesthetic
Good job Josh, you now have alerted a bunch of people that a mostly dead mmo has actual progression and an objective. I'm sure we'll see videos of people gathering the Book of Lore in the coming months.
as of 3 hours after upload, player count is at 57, with a 69 24-hr peak
@@atrane365 nice
@@atrane365 So Josh is just the god of MMO death now? He decides what shall fall (TERA) and what may yet be granted new life? Neat, lol.
@@Ithirahad eldevin also had a boost of players after his video
Am I crazy for absolutely adoring the text to speech of this game? Its so creepy and kinda reminds me of analogue horror. :)
It reminds me of game jams for a similar reason
This was so bizarre and so fascinating. You gave it more love than it deserved...or maybe exactly the love it deserved. To tell its own very, very strange story to more people. I love that because of this video, this strange game found so much love all of the sudden and people willing to give it a shot. How cool! It's amazing that you helped resurrect it for awhile just like your character in game was. Mad props to the devs too!
This felt surreal.
Reminds me of "that one game you played decades ago when you were a kid, can remember only vague images of having played it and can't remember what it was called or any strong detail and can never find out what it was, or if it was just a fever dream".
There was a crazy MMO i remember playing called Fung wan Online, it was a martial arts MMO where your class was based on what weapon skills/style you picked or trained with
This reminds me of an old game called sacrifice, same level of creepiness and similar art style.
I have a couple of cartoons like that in my memory. Some early 80s anime stuff that managed to make it to US television and the like.
There's a bizarre space builder sim game I saw on TH-cam years ago which I've never been able to find since --- it's one of these resource gathering games where you collect the resources to build the machines to make the parts to create the harvesters to do the research to get the science to, etc. You start out on foot on an alien planet and eventually you build your own spacecraft and explore the solar system (and maybe nearby stars?). I remember it as a 3D first-person-view game, with terrible, amateurish graphics; blocky models, low-res textures, generally migraine-inducing. But I've never seen a trace of it. Now I have no idea whether I just imagined the whole thing.
@@hjalfi sounds to me like you're describing no man's sky on release, not the version that it is today.
I could be wrong though.
congrats josh, the top number of player jumped from 14 to 69 by the power of your videos. the power of your words has more than quadruple the population of this game at his peak. Bringing life to inanimate thing, a true animyst right there
Nice
The voice lines sounds like I’m talking to someone who’s died 5 years ago on an antique telephone. I love it
I can't believe you revived the game. The all-time peak players is now 69 (NICE) with 62 active players at this moment. I hope we can get that video with the lore and final boss now.
Edit: It even had a news update addressing the lag issue due to the new highest number of players. :D
This was oddly captivating. There's something to this whole...experience. Not sure what or how much of it is even real but boy it is there and its alluring.
This and abandoned games like it have a post apocalypse feel to them. You find vast abandoned places, clearly once meant to be bustling with players but long abandoned, monuments to player determination stood and unmatched by the NPCs around, worlds existing on abandoned servers forgotten by their creators.
this is like the guy you meet at a pub, and is the nicest person you have ever met, he says he likes to make games, you are friends for the next 30 years and you think you genuinely know everything about him. and then you finally see the game he was talking about
The items vibrating are likely because of the way computers deal with floating point values. basically, the farther you are from the coordinates of 0,0,0 the more rounding the game does when rendering where stuff is, which causes the stuff being rendered to move more across your screen since the rounding becomes less accurate.
was looking for this comment
now i can exit this nightmarish purgatory.
I saw this game on steam like yesterday.. I downloaded it because of the good reviews and interesting art style. And I was surprised how many players there were. I now know why.
To be honest the idea of the game itself sounds neat I think it would benefit a lot more as a single player game not at MMO shame that the devs gave up
This feels like it came from the mind of a mad individual trying to put their dreams into reality. The stuff that the classical movies are made out of.
Incredibly compelling, but only a few have the courage and will to try it.
I played for three hours after watching this video
More like patience for trash.
@@0816M3RC Nah. There's an allure to the genuinely weird. Maybe not everyone feels it, maybe the same things don't do it for everyone, but it exists.
If you're lucky, sometime you'll find something that makes you feel so puzzled that you just HAVE to see more, and then you'll get it.
There's no sense trashing what compels someone else.
This game is like some sort of purgatory simulator. It reminds me of some dark reality outside of our own that nobody spends too much time in. It's very weird.. I want more videos on it
I was one of the first supporters for this game back when it released. All my money was well spent on these guys. They truly care about this game and I am absolutely surprised you found it. I hope people play and enjoy it!
It's a case of if they truly cared they would at least promote it or do something to make it more approachable while keeping the soul of it intact, not to piss on the parade.
It's a FANTASTIC concept- But it's skeletal (forgive the pun) and should have had some more polishing and immediate contents, much more nice and shiny games have died because the market was super saturated for a time but a few stood the test of time because they well and truly did care.
Same issue as project gorgon, people who have a day hobby they make coffee break money off of only in this case no one was even playing.
IE: Tree of Savior LOOKs like a labor of love with all the animations, unique graphics, locales, aesthetic, historical references and research but falls absolutely apart X hours in.
@@InvadeNormandy it's a 2 man dev team that launched the game in 2018 after running a modded Rust server of the same name. They've been making the game in-between their several day jobs and using their jobs to keep the servers up because they are passionate about the game. They spent the first two years getting streamers to to play it with their chat and very few stuck around after those streams. They genuinely worked on updating the game for 4 years and the most players they got were 15 online at once. Tarpit, the Dev who creates all the textures, music, sounds, and models, used to stream game development on his Twitch and has since turned his streams into art and music streams since all his work mixes together. They are now hard at work doing QoL updates for the now 100+ new players trying to log on an play following the video. They've pushed two new balance patches in already.
Only mentioning this because they did legit try to keep the game going and did many things to get the name out.
@@thealmightyjack like i say to people, if you are stuck at something... sometimes, you just need to wait for a miracle.
And a miracle did happen after 4 years. The perfect streamer for the job, played it, reviewed it, and brought it to a much larger audience. A miracle (of a modern kind)
@@thealmightyjack I suppose and that's fair enough. There is a lot of mono and duo team people who can get things "off the ground" sorta I am not discounting the work outright and I was a bit shitty about that. But the realistic expectations of "But where's it going and why"
@@thealmightyjack it's tough out there, there's a reason that one of the biggest pieces of advice to new would-be developers is "MMOs take at least 50 million dollars and a team of 50 people with at least 500 years of combined dev experience to release something actually fun not a bare bones 'technically an MMO'", there's also a reason that of all the big kickstarters, NONE of the big MMO projects have actually delivered successfully on their full specs and roadmap, not any one I'm aware of.
Mad respect for what they were able to accomplish, clearly it's a massive labor of love, and I hope they look at it and go "we accomplished something thought to be impossible," but unfortunately it still isn't any fun to play and design choices were made that ensured it could never be successful. Sadly, they didn't do the ONE thing that might have actually gotten them more traction-- a developer-written wiki explaining what in the hell is going on and how to get started at your task. I am sure the developers played this and weren't frustrated into going into the code and nerfing the hell out of the enemies, so there's probably some way to reliably fight them (unfortunately like many small dev teams they may be testing on a local host that performs far differently, so they might actually see the enemies that are invisible thanks to jenky netcode, or have more responsive attacks and TO THEM the game seems perfectly balanced but once you have to put up with netcode and latency it is not playable) if they let us in on the secret perhaps there's a lot more fun to be had.
I don't know what I expected initially from this, but I wasn't expecting much. In spite of all of that, it sounds like under the layers of artificial difficulty and poorly balanced combat and poorly scripted enemies, there's the bones of a genuinely good, if niche, game. I hope that the dev takes the lessons he's learned from Animyst and goes further next time. It is really hard to pull off the sort of off-kilter alien feel that Josh is describing here and have it actually feel good to experience.
Thank you so much for making a video on this game. Downloaded it today and I’m absolutely having a blast. Met several players who found all 8 pages and they have all been so helpful. The world is amazing the combat as actually super fun once you get some cool spells and the dialogue is superb. This game is loaded with charm and is absolutely worth a playthrough for anyone who is into surreal sandbox quirky fantasy games.
That was eerie and I loved every minute of it