Developing interactivity is effort and an investment. Most developers put up a simple loading screen, maybe some text like rotating tips, and a loading indicator. Until 2015 a patent on interactive loading screens may have made developers and publishers cautious and decide against developing interactivity.

High Hell, released in 2017, features fast gameplay, short levels, and interactive loading screens. (Linked Clip) (High Hell Steam page)

What's the best kind of loading screen? Do you have examples of good or bad interactive loading screens?

From the super long title, I expected The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash to be a mediocre standard-production anime, probably isekai, like we have seen numerous in recent times.

But the first episode instantly sets a great atmosphere and tone, substantiated by great visuals, animation, world depth, and story premise. While aspects or focus points change through the journey progression, the production quality never drops.

The "tamer" and picking-up-trash aspects are only a premise and hardly important to what is happening.

It's an adventure, a youthful exploration, stemming from hardships, with discoveries of the world and people. It's slow-paced - it reminded me of Mushishi (beautiful, world-depth, character embedded in world, slow-paced).

It's a great series that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Have you watched it? What did you think?

JP title: Saijaku Tamer wa Gomi Hiroi no Tabi o Hajimemashita

Finished airing on 2024-03-29

In Sky: Children of the Light you can let yourself get taken by the hand, and the other player guides/plays for you and you barely need to do anything anymore. Felt a bit absurd and funny, but interesting nonetheless. Certainly unique. It was also very good to eat some snacks and watch yourself progress while doing so.

Sky is an interesting and visually beautiful/well-crafted game. It has many things going for it. But also things I found frustrating and annoying.

I was also confused quite a bit, about quite a few things about what is happening and interacting in what way.

If only there weren't so many cutscenes blocking me from actually playing the game and feeling embedded in the world and atmosphere. I hate those disrupting cutscenes. Forced camera focus was also annoying at times.

Overall, I find Sky quite interesting, and can certainly recommend taking a look at and even into it.

Sky: Children of the Light is available on Steam for free, in Early Access. It has also been available on iOS since 2019, Android since 2020, Switch since 2021, PS4 since 2022.

Walking back and forth between sofa + controller + TV and my PC + keyboard to chat with people was a hassle though 🤡 (I was streaming PC to TV so it was the same thing. Chatting is entirely optional.)

(Sorry for the shitty ~~screenshot~~ photo of hand-holding.)

Have you played Sky? What did you think of the implementation of social systems and interactions with other players?

I have an Android tablet and a pen for it.

Do you have any FOSS experience or recommendations for Android tablet drawing apps?