Kate Gray

@hownottodraw

I write games & jokes. Sometimes both. ⌛ past: journalist & presenter @ ONM, OXM, Nintendo Life, The Guardian, GameSpot, Xbox, Minecraft, etc 🔮 present: games writer @ Moonstone Island, Owlchemy, & Hello Kitty Island Adventure @ Nova Scotia, Canada

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Kate Gray@hownottodraw· 24d

🫵 YOU THERE! 🫵 🗺️ Do you live in Nova Scotia? 🎱 Are you part of a marginalised community (including, but not limited to, LGBTQ+ identities, women, and POC)? 👯‍♂️ Do you want to meet people? 👾 Do you enjoy video games? ✨ Then come to my event! ✨ www.eventbrite.ca/e/gamirsgirl...

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· 29d

I wrote an extremely relatable game dev quest in Hello Kitty Island Adventure

cinnamoroll says “well… I was thinking: what if I made a mail delivery game! but i’ve never made a game before…”

the player can reply:
- we can learn together
- I hear it’s real chill
- it can’t be THAT hard to make a video game, right?

Badtz maru says “you need a VR option, too. and FMV cutscenes. with an fps pvp side quest.”

the player can reply:
- huh
- are those words
- and npc mtx dps!

badtz says “and you’ll need ultra widescreen support and character customisation and split screen”

he continues, “also last night I watched a movie about robots and now I think the game should be about robots”

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 15

they let me write a Godfather quest for Hello Kitty Island Adventure! In this quest, My Sweet Piano reads -- and misunderstands -- a magazine about the Mafia, and wants to learn more about it...

My Sweet Piano, a small pink sheep, says to the player: "there you are. my favourite consigliere. come here, my friend."

the player can respond: "your what" or "con... sig... huh?"

My Sweet Piano continues, talking about her new magazine: "it's called Fuggedaboutit: A Guide to the Family."

My Sweet Piano describes the magazine: "it's about these enterprising people who run a company out of pizza parlors."

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 15

see those orange patches on the ground? that’s not a weird stain or a filter, the sun is orange today

a photo of a pavement (or sidewalk, if you prefer) that is grey with some splotches of orange that look like spilled paint or faded bleach

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 14

one of the best skills a writer can have is reusing and repurposing existing assets in new ways. so I wrote a bunch of Hello Kitty Island Adventure Quests about giant food and bugs >:3

a really big pizza on top of a building in Hello Kitty Island Adventure

a really big strawberry and cake with an umbrella to protect it from the rain

a gigantic colourful caterpillar wiggles across the street in a city

badtz-maru, a black sort of cat-creature from the sanrio universe, says “can you imagine if there was a huuuuge squeakle” which there is, right behind him. the player can say “I can imagine” or “oh dear”

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 13

yeah!

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 13

I made some egg tokens for my MTG egg deck! they’re all video game eggs! please suggest more, I need more

seven small plastic flat eggs lie on a table on top of a Magic the Gathering card. They all have 0/1 written on top to indicate that they have zero power and one toughness. There are three Yoshi eggs, two eggs based on Animal Crossing’s bunny day, one Togepi egg from Pokémon, and one based on the wind fish’s egg from Link’s Awakening.

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 8

This patch that I just saw on the metro now reads like a portentous ill omen :(

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jul 7

please enjoy how beautiful this blue is. I put this blue into my body and I’m gonna turn it into pee

A photo of a latte in the sunshine. It is the blue of a milky lagoon, of a dusky clear sky, of a small forget-me-not flower. It is soothing and sophisticated. It is the kind of colour you would want to paint a bedroom or an office. Floating in the latte are clear ice cubes and delicately pink rose petals, which make the latte look like a beautiful pond

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 27

have some more pictures, the team did so good bringing this to life!!!!

A screenshot of Hello Kitty Island Adventure showing a quest that is called my objectionable lawyer with the description "my sweet piano wants to be an Ace Attorney"

my melody is presiding over a courtroom as judge and she says "court is now in session. your opening arguments please"

my melody as judge says "um ... I declare kuromi completely innocent"

overlaid on the court of Hello Kitty is text and Hello Kitty font that is supposed to emulate the not guilty text from ace attorney

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 26

They let me write a whole Ace Attorney quest for Hello Kitty Island Adventure 😈

Kuromi talks to Hello Kitty and My Sweet Piano in a cafe. she says, "my name is ino'sent biestander (If you're using text to speech, it's supposed to sound like innocent bystander) and I know nothing about any cookies!"

The Ace Attorney OBJECTION! text, but done I. Hello Kitty language

My Sweet Piano, as a lawyer, says "no, we can't lose... we need something outlandish to happen... to turn this case around..."

Detective Badtz-maru says " now everybody knows that the lawyer always does the investigation part too." this is a reference to how the lawyers always seem to be involved in the investigation in the Ace Attorney games

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 25

I'm biased, but this has to be one of the best ways to pitch a bunch of "go in blind" games that I've ever seen (from the "Hidden Depths" Steam bundle page) store.steampowered.com/bundle/70688...

Five games are described on a Steam page with heavily redacted text. Here is what each one says, with the blacked-out text skipped over:

Animal Well is a game about a well.

In Blue Prince, you journey to Room 46?

Fez: Gomez is a creature living in a world on a journey.

Outer Wilds: Named Game of the Year 2019 by Giant Bomb, Polygon, Eurogamer, and The Guardian, Outer Wilds is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning game.

Tunic, an isometric action game about a small fox.

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 25

a screenshot of a review reading "I have no complaints" and a four-star rating

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 19

heyyyyy buddy you ok

a porcelain white cat that looks like it fell over 3 hours ago and then gave up on life and melted. he has little blue eyes that are reminiscent of one of those terrible SpongeBob popsicles. also, I love him

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 17

if you also want to eat bones by accident, or try the tasty duck neck, this is the packaging. it's really good (and I think you probably CAN eat the bones on purpose if you want???)

a photo of blue vacuum sealed packaging with words on it that I can't read, and a picture of a long piece of meat that is a duck neck

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 15

Wikipedia's "Did You Know" section on the front page today has this bit of info from the development of Dark Pictures that I quite like. I think writer's rooms massively benefit from judgement-free spaces, although it's important to make sure they're not harmful to the folks in the room, too

a screenshot that reads (following on from the heading "did you know":

" That the developers of the dark pictures anthology: Man of Medan held judgment-free death meetings to brainstorm unique death scenes for the characters"

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 15

There's a chocolate bar that's only available in Europe called Kinder Country. It's got puffed rice inside and it slaps

A picture of a Kinder Country bar, showing a brown bar of chocolate with a white interior and some puffed rice chunks inside

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 12

here's another donation on behalf of someone else :)

a screenshot of a receipt saying I've donated $32.10 Canadian dollars

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 10

he's an optional boss fight, I think

a screenshot of Dark Souls with a man in armour holding a shield and pointing to the left, off-screen. he is standing in front of a very Catholic-church-looking background with lots of candles and carved stone. A boss health bar is at the bottom of the screen, labelled "foreign man who points"

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 9

Let's goooo!

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 8

you gotta make one of these hot pads for your pies! I'm a terrible sewist and they still come out good 😅

a circular hot pad for protecting surfaces from hot dishes, made to look like a cherry or strawberry pie with red fabric and a crust-coloured lattice made out of binding tape sewn on top and woven together

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 8

Pride? oh, you mean snissing season?

a screenshot of a reddit advert from Poise, which says PSA: it's allergy season, aka snissing (sneezing + pissing) season

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 7

aux armes, citoyens

there is a yogurt in Canada called Liberté, so I have added "egalité" and "yogurnité" underneath to reference the liberté, egalité, fraternité motto of the french revolution. it's a very good joke for 8:30am

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 6

I was curious what the fancasts were like and found this from 9 years ago. ARMIE HAMMER AS JEAN! WOODY HARRELSON AS CHAINS!!! MEGHAN MARKLE AS DONA SALVARA???!! some of these are crazy (I do think Skarsgard would make a good Chains maybe)

a list of fan casted actors as the cast of Locke Lamora. Nicholas Hoult is cast as Locke

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 5

this better not be a ploy to steal my identity, I'll be so mad

A photo of a piece of paper and a pen on a wooden table. in cursive fountain pen handwriting is written the following:

" this is my handwriting. sometimes I do a fancy R, like Librarian Fork" -- this part has an extra-fancy old-timey-style lowercase R -- "but sometimes I forget. or it becomes too illegible. also, I have many fountain pens! yay!"

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 4

FUCK YEAH let's make a boyfriend for Knife Angel, my second favourite British cryptid

imagine, if you will, a 20 foot tall statue of an angel with huge golden wings, looking down on the viewer with a screwed-up face of misery that conveys a sort of parental disappointment, while it holds out its hands like it's hoping you'll give it something, maybe a sword or a mop.

okay got that? now imagine the statue is made of thousands of kitchen knives, because it is

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 4

I do like living in a city where I can take a ferry across the ocean whenever I want

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 4

I love how much this historian hates Mr Blobby source: www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

For cultural historian Dr Matthew Sweet, his revival is a sign of idiotic times. “Mr Blobby is a creation of breathtaking stupidity,” he says. “His stupid name, his stupid appearance, his stupid voice and its ceaseless repetition of his own stupid name are unimaginative to the point of atavism. Somehow, his dumb relentlessness has allowed him to push through into some other territory. Maybe his blundering, lobotomised qualities strike a chord in a world that’s commonly said to be getting more stupid.”

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 1

huh, maybe all the weird shit in Annihilation was just an old cabbage that someone forgot about at the back of their fridge

a quarter of a red cabbage, coated in what looks like salt crystals (?) has sprouted forth from its innards a tall, amethyst tree of gnarled and twisted leaves

Kate Gray@hownottodraw· Jun 1

from the front page of Wikipedia today is the delightful fact that a woman named Mary Smith used to wake hundreds of people up in London's East End by shooting dried peas at their bedroom windows